I have a terminal illness. It's called Alicante Airport's No.1 runway- and last week it flew to the top of my most embarrassing moments. By a distance.
I made a public exhibition of myself in front of half the population of Spain. Or to be more accurate, everyone at the weekly Fun Quiz at Monte's Bar in Los Montesinos.
The British expat community here in the Costas, particularly those of us growing longer in the tooth (if we have any left) are quite partial to quiz evenings. It's good fun, the partaking is more important than the winning (she lied) and for anyone who has a semblance of a brain, the nearest we'll ever get to a Mastermind audition.
It is also living proof that nostalgia really is what it used to be...and one of the few benefits of being a Golden Girl.
Last week's cliffhanger at Monte's ended in two-way deadlock, so our team of Marjory, Ian, the two Pats and yours truly found ourselves facing a tie-breaker question. My lips broke into a quiet smirk as my disintegrating memory flashed back to the previous occasion two teams finished all square. We weren't involved, so my guess was irrelevant – but when I hit the exact figure for the capacity of Lord's cricket ground (28,000) our gang were gobsmacked.
This time it was another numbers game. How long, in metres, is the main runway at Alicante Airport? Cue suggestions from the team of 3,000 and 4,000. ''It's much more than that, insisted Mrs Knowall, “Something like 9,000 I reckon.''
'Sum thing' had clearly snapped as I tried to figure out the difference between metres and yards because in my mind it seemed to make sense. To have Darren standing over us waiting for an answer merely added to my confusion.
Amazingly my stubbornness prevailed, despite everyone else's enormous doubts. I got my way and we lost by a distance.
I paid for it big time, too. The repeated peals of laughter that accompanied our normally sedate drive back to El Raso were all at my expense.
And if you are ever confronted by an imaginary runway stretching from Alicante Airport through El Altet and out cross the Mediterranean, you know where it came from.