Oh, the agony!

Resident agony uncle Kit Hesketh-harvey solves your dilemmas

One day I’ll fly away

QI’ve been dating a lovely woman for some six months and decided to whisk her away for a romantic weekend. However, when I pitched the idea, it emerged she has a fear of flying as well as of water and therefore boats. I’m very keen on her, but does this mean I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life on this island?

J. R., Hampshire

ADoomed? I envy you, sir. Not because, nowadays, the attendant hassle of flying anywhere is, however one achieves it, so utterly ghastly that no trip involving an airport is worth it, nor because the good Lord didn’t give us gills. Nor yet because a weekend—say, at best, 56 hours—cannot possibly be romantic if more than 10 of those hours are spent in travel.

No, I envy you because several lifetimes of romantic weekends wouldn’t be enough to exhaust the infinite joys that this little island can provide. Norway? Try instead Oban. Deauville? Torquay. Carcassonne? Alnwick. Tallinn? Chilham. Berlin? Glasgow. The Ardennes? Kielder. Portofino? Portmeirion.

Abroad, as Nancy Mitford’s Uncle Matthew rightly declared, is bloody. If you really wish to imperil so beautiful a nascent relationship, then try the Orient

Express and valium in her Cinzano, but I honestly don’t advise it.