Just over a week to go until our holiday and still the flip-flop dilemma remains unsolved.

I hope you never have a flip-flop dilemma.

As somebody once said - I think it was Shakespeare in Twelfth Night - “Some people are born to wear flip-flops, some achieve flip-flops, and some have flip-flops thrust upon them.”

I am in the last category because I have so far managed to survive for nearly 56 years of my life without wearing them, but the times they are a-changing.

We have never been ones for sitting around a pool or beside the sea while we could be exploring interesting places and looking for hideous souvenirs to bring home... until now.

But we aren’t getting any younger, and last summer in Corfu we decided to return to our villa, late one afternoon, and do nothing more than lollop around by the pool with a drink and a good book for a few hours. In other words: what some people spend their whole holiday doing.

And that was that. Most of the other afternoons were spent in the same manner.

For much the same reason, when we are home we now can’t go anywhere without looking for a nice little cafe to stop and have a cup of tea in.

So when we jet off to Croatia this year, and we tell people we are looking forward to driving around, even as far as Slovenia, and hiring bikes, and walking, and hopping over to Venice, what we really mean to say is we can’t wait to spend a few afternoons doing nothing much.

And that’s where the flip-flops come in.

When you are lounging around near water, you need something you can easily slip on and off your feet, so I have been on the look-out for something suitable, and have already bought some flip-flops and given them a dry run at home.

The project is being managed by my wife, who has vast experience of wearing flip-flops over many years, including when they are completely unnecessary, as an alternative to sandals.

I call her Professor Flip-Flop.

So I have been walking up and down in them, in the kitchen, getting funny looks from the cats and thinking if I had taken to wearing high heels I wouldn’t look any less graceful.

For a start, it is surprising how difficult it is to keep flip-flops on your feet, even though other people make it look easy.

Either there is something fundamentally wrong with my toes that means I will never be able to keep them on, or there is a knack to it and I haven’t got it yet.

But so far I haven’t been able to keep them attached to my feet for more than three steps.

Even if I could keep them on, I really don’t think I would ever get used to walking in them, probably because I don’t have confidence in them, and I end up overthinking it, like ice skating.

Even swearing at them and throwing them in the bin hasn’t helped, and if they are ever retrieved from there it will only be so they can be donated to a charity shop for selling to somebody with the right kind of feet and/or the appropriate skills for wearing them.

As far as I can tell, they were designed for comedy, either making you walk like a duck or tripping you up when you least expect it.

And it’s really not what I had in mind when I said we should go for a nice trip.