What is even more fabulous is that I am flying from Knock airport at a price which means I can treble my carbon emissions by bringing my mother and son with me.

Fantastic! Travelling across the Atlantic Ocean with child and childcare in tow? That practically makes me Madonna!

Do you remember the days when travel used to be this exciting all the time. I was 21 before I first got on an aeroplane. I went to Marbella on holiday with a boyfriend. I was sick with excitement at the idea of being "abroad" and got sun stroke boiling myself puce in suntan oil. It was fantastic.

The problem is that so few places feel "abroad" any more. Everywhere sunny in Europe feels the same and I can never quite get my head around leaving the sunshine and showery charm of a rainbow-clad west-ofIreland summer for the characterless golf courses of the Algarve or an apartment block in Fuengirola.

The last package holiday I was persuaded onto by my sister was a family affair. It was a Club Med with a Kids' Club, which my son refused to go to even though we had paid for him to be minded by grumpy French students all day long.

We had also paid for breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and supper . . . each one I approached with the fervent appetite of the mindful consumer.

By day five I was a flatulent lump barely able to lift myself off my lilo to go and forage around the resort shop for a generous kaftan to disguise my expanding rump before hauling myself into the canteen for the next round of hot 'n' cold barbecue buffet.

I know I sound like a smug bitch who lives in a rural idyll (get over it! ) but I would trade the bikini-with-high-heels look for a rolled up t-shirt and knickers on Ross beach any day of the week.

I honestly cannot see the point of spending huge sums of money on taking my son abroad to sizzle himself senseless in a hotel pool when he is happier up to his armpits in sand and muck, hanging with his buddies on a local beach.

For that reason I have decided that if I am going to bore a hole in the environment with colossal air-mile carbon credits I am at least going to justify it by saying that I am "working". Of course, I am in a privileged position of being a writer which means that there is very little in life that cannot be put down to "research".

But like it or not, these things are starting to matter more and more. We can't keep hopping on planes and going halfway across the world just to pick up discount handbags.

Or whizzing backwards and forwards to Spain for weekend breaks. If we do we'll continue to destroy the planet and leave our children with nothing. Not even holiday homes next to golf courses in the Algarve.

And then there'll be no more lovely trips to New York from Knock airport. Not even "working".