It is easy to be wise after the event.

Yesterday afternoon a kindly husband spirited the children away for a meal and bowling, dispatching me to the spa complex which nestles in the well-forested resort in which we are holidaying.

I took War And Peace and put it on a recliner next to the azure pool, and ambled from steam room to turkish sauna to Balinese flower room to pool, and ate snacks and read, surrounded by people in bikinis. And very soon I was bored silly.

I managed to while away two out of the three hours before heading on my way, bidding the beautiful saccharine Stepford attendants adieu with something like relief.

As I re-entered our apartment, I was met by a smell.

It was the smell of minced beef which has been heated without the aid of onion or garlic or sundried tomatoes: purely on its own.

Now Reader, I have a troubled relationship with minced beef. My father will wax lyrical about all the times I refused to eat it, and indeed, the time it formed the centre of a face-off where he insisted I eat my dinner and I maintained I would eat it when Hell froze over.

All my life I have found it a troublesome dish. But it is cheap, and others seem to find it cheerful. So in my adult life I have developed ways of handling it: I only ever serve it with sun-dried tomatoes and tomato sauce and lashings of garlic; I casserole it within an inch of its culinary existence so it is tender; I begin every recipe with onion so that I never, never have to smell that mince-frying-on-its-own smell.

And we have occupied the same reality for twenty years, the mince and I, using these few ground rules.

Our little holiday let has a flaw. It may have en suite bathrooms for its en suite bathrooms; it may have a daily maid coming in to clean; but it has no big electric oven.

I ask you.

What were they thinking? That those who could afford these apartments would want to eat out anyway? I brought my flour and my butter and my pastry cutters for mince pies, for Pete’s sake!  What was Santa supposed to snack on when he dropped off the stockings, swiss roll?

Yesterday, after several days of pan cooking, Phil made a discovery.

The little microwave doubled, in a profoundly confusing way, as an oven.

We stared at it, perplexed. It was like those washer-dryers: it combined two functions in an unnatural way. I have always wondered how the electrics of a dryer cope with all those gallons of washing water. And now here was something which was sending microwaves through something one moment and baking it the next.

I was beginning to view it with primeval suspicion. We women didn’t get where we are today by allowing the ring of fire in our cave to double up as a handy defroster.

As I opened the door on my return to the holiday apartment, I knew something was very wrong.

Phil had continued in his Extremely Helpful phase by killing three proverbial birds with one stone. He had (i) used up the questionable mince in the fridge which was on its last day because I thought I didn’t have an oven; (ii) he had tested this strange animal, the tiny combination oven; and (iii) he had cooked tomorrow’s dinner.

It was circling menacingly inside the little metal box as it whirred. Apparently it had been on ten minutes and already it was smelling dangerous. Because my Extremely Helpful husband had  (i) neglected to fry onion and garlic to add to it; (ii) used some cheap instant gravy granules to spice it up and (iii) forgotten to smother its distinctive flavour with sun-dried tomatoes.

In addition it was housed in a glass dish. It had a window on the world. And you may call me a little unhinged if you wish, but I’ll swear it was glowering.

But Phil had been incredibly supportive and helpful: this fact was simply not in dispute. So I clamped my mouth and my nose shut as best I could. I said Hello Darling, hello kids, oooh how lovely, tomorrow’s dinner taken care of.

And I ran regularly to the patio doors to take fresh draughts of air whenever humanly possible.

The kids excused themselves fairly quickly and went to bed with a story. Is it me, or were they a tad more eager than usual to vacate this, our central living space and flee to the olfactory purity of their bedroom?

We have no air freshener: but I hit on a tactic which, though possibly a little lavish, helped me through my time in the same room as that mince. I accessed my beloved Prada perfume. And I squirted it around the room. And then, I put enough on me to satisfy any passing sniffer dog that I was a perfume factory.

What then followed was about two hours of a subtle game entitled See Who Can Stand The Mincey Smell Longest. A sort of culinary daredevilry.

Phil would say: it’s quite pungent isn’t it?  And I would say: yes, dear.

Phil would say: we can leave it if you like. I’ll put it outside on the balcony. We don’t need to eat it.

And I would reply, no, really love, mince just smells like that, one just has to put up with it.

And we would watch the shapes on the television moving, unable to focus on them because our noses were under ambush.

Finally we fled to bed at 9:30pm. The casserole was still cooking as we left.

We arrived in the bedroom, and at last, thank God, my husband snapped. “I can’t stand it any longer,” he informed me through gritted teeth. “That thing smells awful. It’s going outside.”

He bolted downstairs, and he expelled the casserole from the house. And sub-zero temperatures or no, we flung open all the windows and let the fresh air flood in.

It is today: and the mince is outside, on the balcony, still enjoying its window on the world.

And I’m not going anywhere near it.