I'VE just come back from a big trip, although you wouldn't know it.

I wrote my column in advance so you wouldn't notice my absence and miss it.

But I'm back, in one piece, and keen to go again. I've already started planning in my mind. It keeps me going.

When I am planning a trip, especially a big one overseas, I like to go online to get the best deals on flights and hotels as much as the next person.

My husband is more of a devotee than I am at making all our travel bookings online.

He will sit up until two in the morning bent over the computer until he finds the cheapest seats on the most budget of all the budget airlines, and then stomp up the stairs to wake me and proudly announce his unrivalled position at topping the list as the world's best bargain hunter... and miser.

But sometimes... often times... he comes to grief.

Like the time he got us outstandingly cheap deals on a flight from Paris to Athens. He made the booking months before and didn't check on it until we were actually at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris looking for our airline's check-in counter, waving our e-tickets with confidence.

Up and down we went in that departure hall searching for our airline, weaving our way through untidy crowds with immense baggage spilling out of long lines at all the check-ins. With no sign of ours.

Off to the inquiry desk we went to wait in line with a hundred others all frantic with their own questions, until finally, our turn, where a prompt and curt answer to our question revealed that said airline did not fly out of Charles de Gaulle any more.

Hadn't for months.

An expensive ticket had to be bought on the spot with another airline who said they only had Business Class seats left and if we wanted to get to Athens that day, and we very much did, that was our only choice.

Then there was the time the husband made an online booking for us from Mykonos to Athens at our computer in April for a flight later in August.

Instead of tapping in 24/8/14 he tapped in 24/4/14 and we didn't discover this typo until standing at the check-in counter in Mykonos in August to be told we'd missed our flight last April and too bad, but the August   flight now was now full and would we please go away and stop bothering them.

The only thing worse to the traveller than watching her plane fly high up in the sky without her on it, is the cost of the purchase of another ticket (always expensive) for another day because all flights are booked out for the rest of the week.

This, as you will understand, has caused many feisty fights in our household over the years.

Him insisting on booking everything himself on line "because it is so much cheaper" and me insisting we let an expert at a travel agency do it.

I'm still trying to win the fight.

I'll keep you in touch.