David Whitley finds that romance goes down the toilet after a weather-delayed flight.

It was supposed to be my trump card. If one thing was going to persuade the lady of my life to fall for Australia, it was Lord Howe Island. She couldn’t fail to melt after a ludicrously expensive stay in paradise, looking out over the lagoon from the ultra-exclusive confines of a split level luxury apartment.

Unfortunately, a day of waiting around in the domestic terminal at Sydney airport isn’t quite so glamorous. After a series of cock and bull delaying tactics, the airline staff finally had to admit what the problem was. Lord Howe was caked in rainwater, and the storm surrounding the island wasn’t looking like moving any time soon. The flight was simply not going to happen – it wasn’t safe to land.

So instead of clinking a glass of fine pinot noir in our mountain-and-sea view suite at the £650-a-night Capella Lodge, we were left scrabbling around in search of the mini-bar in the spectacularly soulless airport Mercure. Airline courtesy hotels, I’m afraid to say, don’t quite have that heart-melting je ne sais quoi.

Following a lot of highly inventive swearing, I decreed that romance didn’t have to be dead after all. I could rescue this; I could still woo the apple of my eye by taking her out for a meal in one of Sydney’s top restaurants. The harbour is a passable substitute for the lagoon, the food would be just as good and I’d manage to look far richer than I actually am courtesy of the long-suffering credit card.

So I whisked her away in a taxi, only to realise that it was rush hour. We inched and crawled through some of Sydney’s less salubrious suburbs, allowing her to have a good look at the side of the city I was meticulously trying to hide. The twenty minute journey took just over an hour, by which time the good lady’s bladder had gone roughly the same way as her mood. We finally rocked up. She made an undignified dash for the bathroom, while I tried to identify which cocktails would put her in a good humour (or at least get her the most drunk).

Fifteen minutes later, the cocktails were sat on the table, losing their fizz. I was looking like an increasingly desperate loner; my girl had disappeared. The day had gone spectacularly badly, but it wasn’t really my fault. Surely she hadn’t stood me up and hopped on the next plane back to England?

After deciding it was probably toilet time myself, I discovered the commotion. A waitress was shaking the door of the ladies’ bathroom to the tune of some recognisable yelps from inside. The flustered serving girl called over the manager, and soon I was treated to the sight of three people attacking the door with various tools.

“If I slide this under,” said the manager to my incarcerated inamorata, whilst feeding a screwdriver under the door. “You might be able to unscrew the lock from the inside.”

Eventually she emerged, with a face like thunder and a screwdriver being waved threateningly in my direction. The management were effusively apologetic, but my cause was surely shot. It didn’t help that I was laughing. Or that my first words were: “Erm, I don’t suppose there’s a you-locked-my-girlfriend-in-the-toilets discount is there?”

On the plus side, we did manage to squeeze that expensive bottle of pinot noir out of them. On the more predictable minus side, we still live in England.