There was a time when I used to give advice, serious advice, on travel pages, about what to take with you on a trip. I never took any notice of the advice myself in those days, since as long as you had the bottle of gin, the 200 ciggies and the portable typewriter everything else was only icing on the cake.
I used to look with scorn at all the people in airports fussing about their matching luggage, their eyes scanning the carousel in case one piece had gone missing. I was always half hoping mine would go missing and I might get the compensation. It did once, in New York, and instead of buying a nightdress and a change of underwear I bought a desperately expensive bubble bath and a bottle of champagne and even now, 35 years later, I remember it all with pure pleasure.
No such freedoms these days. If I should lose the case that has all my work in it, I may as well give up on the future.
If I lost the case with the garments, it would be serious. Being a large person, I can't easily get things in shops that will fit me. I have to speak at various functions and they might not take too well to my wearing the same outfit for six weeks. So I have joined the ranks of those who look anxiously until the two brightly coloured, glaring suitcases come out of the innards of a plane.
Tomorrow night I will be unpacking them in a hotel that looks out on the Pacific Ocean.
In the old days I used to pack in 10 minutes. The old days are gone. I'm ashamed to say it has taken a week to pack.
I got a clip-board - not just a piece of paper but a serious clip-board - and I listed all the items. I felt somehow powerful and in control as I wrote down things such as: Sellotape; torch; Velcro rollers; corkscrew; good black dress.
There was a time when I used to think only the insane would make lists like this, but alas I have travelled to too many places and found myself disappointed with the contents of the two glaring cases when I arrived. Like the time I took six pairs of shoes, six T-shirts and no skirts whatsoever to South Africa.
So I realised it was time for the clipboard. It's not that anyone is getting old or forgetful or anything. Lord, no. What people like myself have nowadays is what the Americans call a "senior moment". It's a wonderful phrase and one I have taken up enthusiastically. It takes the whole harm out of being bewildered.
Tomorrow night, when I am unpacking the glaring suitcases in a faraway place, I don't want any surprises. But if it were only matter of what you took with you for six weeks it would be reasonable enough; sadly, it's also a matter of what you leave behind you.
There will be other people staying in the house here while we are gone, so it's not a matter of ramming awful things into a cupboard and saying that it can all be dealt with in December. It means a visit to the dump, which always frightens me because I assume everyone there is getting rid of dismembered bodies and that they think I am doing the same. And a visit in what might, hopefully, be off-peak hour to the bottle bank and the paper bank - rain-forests of newspapers and magazines unread going back to be pulped somewhere. And taking out all the things from the press where the table napkins are, in case I might have hidden some cheese there to stop me eating it.
And one of the things I love to do, in what a psychiatrist friend calls my pathetically over-documented life, is stick my snaps in an album. I don't feel right until I'm up to date with this. So it involves getting out all the pictures since summer, and oohing and aahing over a trip to the Isle of Man, and to Schull, and to the Merriman Summer School, and to get an honorary degree in Queens, and to visit Dickson's Nurseries in Newtownards, and a party in London, and a magical day at the National Ploughing Championships which I think I enjoyed more than anything else this year.
Sorting out all that takes time.
And there are the letters to write which I will not take with me and carry around the world as I have done so often: instead, I will stay up late and write them before I go.
And I won't worry that the cats will miss us because cats have their own agenda and they will think whoever is here is us really, just as long as the bowl of food is put out and someone tells them they are wonderful.
And it doesn't really matter that we will be in some places where it is snowing and others where the sun will be splitting the stones.
And as usual, Gordon is calm and has his own clipboard to humour me and tries to head off too many "senior moments" by reminding me to take my laptop computer, which I nearly forgot.
I read once in an etiquette book that if you are about to travel you should take out an advertisement in a quality paper and tell society of your plans. So in a way, that's what I am doing.
Maeve Binchy will be writing about her trip around the world every Saturday until the beginning of December