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Our flight is in the early afternoon. No rush, then. Our lift to the airport is at 10:15. We get up a little before eight.

A better setting of the air-conditioning has left me feeling much more lively this morning.

“You need to finish the milk, Ronald. And your cola.”

“OK.” You know my view of arguing unnecessarily with Dolores.

“And your sandwich.”

“Don’t worry, I’m onto it.”

It’s quite a leisurely start to the day. It only takes a couple of minutes to stuff all my stuff into my bags.

Our flight isn’t until 13:00. But I want to be at the airport nice and early. No point in missing out on lounge time.

I get to see rather more than from the bus. The outskirts of Belgrade are exactly what you would expect: large assemblies of mid- and high-rise blocks. Mostly concrete. Lovely.

It takes longer than expected to check in. There being a couple of people ahead of us in the priority queue doing some sort of complicated shit. Get a move on. This is my drinking time you’re eating into. On the other hand, they did let us check in Dolores’s bag as well as mine.

Before going to the lounge, we make a detour to the duty free. To buy stuff for the kids. The jammy gits. Everything is priced in euros. A lot of it costs more than I’d pay for a good single malt. We buy the two cheapest bottles of the local stuff we can find. Buying in town would probably have been cheaper.

The Air Serbia lounge is modestly-sized. We manage to find big comfy chairs and think about our physical needs.

It’s a help yourself bar. Brilliant. My favourite type. It’s mostly local spirits in the slivovic vein, along with a few big international brands. Dolores pours me a nice big one. She takes a sip herself.

“Wow, that’s strong.”

“That’s what I was hoping for.”

There’s a bizarre old Yugoslavian film on the TV. With the sound down, obviously. What the fuck is going on? I can’t help watching it. Despite being clueless as to the plot. Is it really just about that bloke getting pissed in a restaurant? Where a strange band plays. Then a drunk steals a tram, seemingly to impress his equally drunk girlfriend. Who hasn’t done that after a few beers too many?

Dolores gets herself some food. First a ready-made sandwich. Then one she assembles herself. I’m not really feeling hungry. The warm food doesn’t look great. As in many lounges. Some sort of spaghetti thing.

“It looks like food that you’d give to kids.” Dolores thinks. She’s not really selling me on it.

I am thirsty, mind. Dolores fetches me another good slug of whatever-it-is. And, after another testing sip, confirms it as “really strong”. Just as I like it.

Just enough time for one more half-filled brandy snifter of some local fruit spirit. Different one every time. All filled with alcoholy goodness. Quite a bit of fruit flavour, too. As you would expect.

After three monster measures, I’m feeling warmed up enough for the flight. I am a nervous flyer, after all.

I don’t have far to stumble. The lounge is virtually opposite our gate. Where we don’t have much of a wait. Until pushy-in boarding is called.

The flight is much like the one coming. Same service and food. The only difference is that this flight is packed. Totally full. Strange how different the occupancy is on the two flights.

There’s quite a queue at passport control as the electronic gates aren’t in operation. At least we’re in the EU queue. The non-EU one is four or five times as long.

As I’m with Dolores, we get the bus back home. After she suggests: “Let’s get the bus.” Remember my policy on unnecessary arguments with Dolores? I’m applying it now.

The kids don’t seem to have destroyed anything while we were away. At least, nothing very obvious. They ran the dishwasher. And they’ve taken away the rubbish, which is suspicious. Hiding the evidence of breakages? I suppose we’ll find out over the next week or two.

Now, let’s get the kettle on. I’m gagging for a cup of tea.