I knew something odd would happen if I trusted Richard Branson. And it didn't take long to find that it had. The plane to Havana hadn't even arrived in London. It was still battling inwards from Jamaica, the pilot clenching his teeth against the wind as he huddled himself deeper into his flying jacket and goggles. It was two hours late. And so we settled and read the British Sunday papers, full of terrors and concerns which seem not to have spread beyond the island, and we drank coffee and we passed the time with our neighbours and eventually we got on the plane.

We were just about to go when the pilot announced that the starter motor had broken. He had had that same experience we've all had, of turning the key and getting a whirring noise but no progress. He couldn't get the engines started. In the old days a man would have swung the propellers and someone would have shouted "Contact!" and we'd have bumped along the grass and taken off. These days, that does not seem to be an option. So they had to call in someone to drive up from Crawley in a white van labelled "Ron's Domestic Appliance and Airline Repairs" and I could imagine him scratching his head through his cap as he peered into the engine compartment, whistling through his teeth and saying "Well, I can do it but it's going to cost you..."

I nodded off after a while and when I came round I had the terror of seeing a goat talking to me through a hedge. It is not the sort of thing a man wants to see. I worked out that it was the TV screen in the back of the seat in front of me but it was still a hedge and a goat because I could see its cold eyes and its awful munching teeth.

Slowly I realised it wasn't a goat. It was a close-up of Richard Branson. Why does this man persist in thinking we care who owns his airline... Why, above all else, does he have the nerve to come on and congratulate himself that "From the letters you send me, I think we've probable got this airline about right..." Especially considering that we were now three hours getting away and that we had to call out Cuban Ron at the other end to turn off the engines and get the doors open.

The man has a nerve.

But at least we are now in Cuba.

Heart

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