I AM writing this surrounded by half-empty suitcases, piles of toiletries and a cat with a very suspicious expression. The day has arrived - the one I, our son and our daughter always dread.

It’s the day we do the packing to go on holiday.

To my mind, if you are going away, all you have to do is open a suitcase and throw in all the stuff you think you’ll need. Just to be on the safe side, you can even write yourself a little list.

But to my wife this isn’t a time to start unwinding and looking forward to your well-earned break. It’s D-Day.

This year she even finished work a day early so she could start worrying about it sooner – or, as she calls it, “concentrate on the packing”.

Now I don’t want to be accused of being sexist here, but it does seem to be a bit of a woman thing, all this concern over making sure you have packed everything.

Blokes have mostly worked out that whatever it is we leave behind, there is a good chance we’ll be able to get a replacement at our destination.

You might think that we are off to somewhere really exotic where they haven’t yet discovered toilet paper or Coca-Cola, and if we inadvertently leave something at home, obtaining it will probably require contacting the British Embassy for advice.

In fact, we are off to Florida, and I have to remind my wife that, should disaster strike and we find we need a sticking plaster or somebody left their underpants at home, they probably have them over there.

They were, after all, the nation that put a man on the moon. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we are going there – to see the rockets and spaceships that got them there.

And don’t think the pressure will be off when we’re on the plane.

While some of our fellow travellers no doubt have it in their minds that we are going to crash, my wife hates planes too – not because she’s nervous about crashing, but because when they shut those doors, what was left behind stays behind.

Before the wheels leave the ground she will also start to wonder whether we’ve left the gas on.

After all, she only checked it a dozen times before we shut the front door.

But it’s not just the packing. Every time we go away the lawns have to be mowed, the house has to be cleaned, the beds changed and the front drive weeded.

While husbands might worry about being burgled while they are away, wives seem more concerned about what the burglars will think if we haven’t dusted behind the fridge.

And finally there’s the cat, who isn’t the brightest button in the box, but, when we go away is suddenly ascribed all kinds of mental and emotional abilities, such as loneliness, vulnerability and boredom, so more worry, when really there is not much in her mind apart from who is going to come in and feed her.

On the drive to the airport we can at least cheer ourselves up with that classic moment from the day before a previous holiday, when I asked my wife if we should get some sweets for the journey, and she said, “No. We’ll buy them when we get there.”

But that decision is nothing compared with the deeply philosophical question we need to consider, whenever we leave home.

As I see it, it’s one of the three great unanswered questions in the universe.

Why are we here? Is there a god? And do we need to take our own towels?