Sheep worrying: dog owners warned their pets will be shot

We have been busy booking holibags in Penman Towers. Bearing in mind we have been taken hostage yet again by The Teenager’s exam schedule and are trying to force her to enjoy a last break with us before she goes off to pastures new in the autumn, we have deferred to her wishes.

That means no exotic foreign climes, no lounging about on a sunny beach.

A proper Scottish break is The Teenager’s idea of paradise, especially if she is permitted to bring a friend.

She has been fortunate over the years to have visited many far-flung locations, both with family and the school but all these pale in comparison to delights closer to home.

If you ask her now to list her favourite holidays, they all involve the kind of scenario that would usually end up on a holiday from hell video compilation:

The time all the electricity went off in our holiday cottage just before the bells struck on Hogmanay; the time an aunt and uncle booked “special accommodation” near the main house for some privacy from the rest of the family and it turned out to be a caravan exactly like the one on Father Ted; sitting on beaches in lashing rain, determinedly eating a soggy picnic. Happy days.

This year, she will also be joining friends on one of these “school’s out” holidays they all seem to go on now, where they pay as little as possible to go as far from parents as possible and behave outrageously.

Obviously, I am practically seeking therapy for myself already at the prospect of what they might get up to.

But at least it leaves a window for me and Mr P to book something less midgey for ourselves.

Somehow, though, I suspect the tales we will be retelling in years to come will involve the quirks and mishaps from whatever awaits us on a Scottish island rather than a luxury resort.