Ah, romantic breaks! What a wealth of optimistic nuance is concealed in such an innocent little phrase: candles, champagne, dinner a deux, sunsets, moonlight, seashores, camiknickers, shared baths, swooning kisses, Barry White. All these things leading inexorably to the bedroom where — freed from the shackles of domestic routine — elemental lovemaking on a par with Cathy and Heathcliff will splice your tremulous souls forever.

No wonder many men quiver in horror at the very word “romance”. High expectations are not something that most males welcome from their womenfolk. As my husband says, “Sometimes it’s best to hope for nothing more from life than that your man clips his nasal hair.” But my beloved springs from that peculiar breed of males who fear nothing more than that

they may be called upon to show some form of PDA, such as holding hands. The variety of hand-squeezes he’s developed over the years to signal “I’m about to let go of your palm in order to thrust my digits deep in my pocket from whence you will never retrieve them,” would delight a Mason.

Nevertheless, when I met my spouse 12 years ago I was given some excellent advice by a family friend: “Escape once a year — just the two of you — come what may. Even if it means locking infants in a cupboard with a box of Cocopops for a week.” She described it as a form of long-term relationship annual check-up, and she was right. I have just learnt over the years to pretend the expedition has some purpose other than romance — that the real reason we are going to Italy is to visit a fascinating little aviation museum. I am the only woman I know who can navigate Paris, Avignon and Lowestoft by a tour of their scale aircraft modelling retail outlets.

The truth is, it’s a fool’s errand to strain too arduously over romantic scenarios: a friend dragged her boyfriend to Capri in the hope he’d propose; he went down on one knee, only because he’d lost a contact lens. I managed to get my beloved to Venice, but only on the pretext we were there for the art and, of course, dwarves in red capes. But you can’t go wrong with Italy, Paris, Provence and Scottish islands. Just don’t mention the “R” word.