Dear Reader

THE plan had been to take my 88-year-old mother-in-law on a cruise last week. It would have been the first time in 20 years that she had been on holiday overseas. It meant applying for a new passport because none of the family had a clue where hers might be lurking — and if it were lurking it would have been well out of date.

I feared the worst on the passport front, given the reported delays and after walking one morning past the Passport Office near Victoria Station and seeing the queues.

But the trusty blue document arrived within a month and we were on our way — until three days before the off when my mother-in-law said she was not up for it. She had taken fright; she thought she would hold everyone up. She was going nowhere.

We should have pushed harder because there were dozens of passengers with mobility issues similar or worse than hers. A fleet of wheelchairs was on our ship and the crew was endlessly patient with those in the slow lane.

One evening, we got talking to an erudite man well into his 90s.

He said that being picked up from his home and delivered to Southampton was the main difference between going on the cruise and staying at home.

Another key factor was knowing it was all-inclusive. No addons, whatsoever, not even the tricky issue of tipping. The allinclusive is back in force, perhaps more popular than ever. You’ll find several tempting ones in our cover story, including seven nights in Tenerife for £254 per person — and that includes flights.

So it’s not all doom and gloom, certainly not on the travel front. Days are getting shorter and belts are tightening. All the more reason to find a bargain and enjoy an Indian summer before, as The Bard put it, the onslaught of ‘barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold’.