One minute I was watching the rain lash against a top bedroom window of a guest house on the Isle of Lewis. The next I was whipped up from my seat by the force of the hurricane and transported to the town of Langholm in the Borders.

I eventually returned to the Hebridean guest house in my red Peugeot 205, with a stop-off in Edinburgh along the way (narrowly avoiding a parking ticket in Abercromby Place).

When it was time to pack to go home at the end of our holiday, I was furious to find that my sisters had filled my suitcase with sticky nuts.