The precipitate descent of my trousers, Brian Rix style, amid the milling crowd in the departure hall of Athens International Airport lent a touch of absurdity to what by then was proving an exceptionally trying evening.

Even we saw the funny side to it, with no reason for embarrassment on my part because, despite having my chinos around my ankles, I was not ‘showing sights’, as indecorous exposures were described in my childhood.

My modesty was preserved by the second pair of trousers I was wearing, for a reason that had everything to do with the plight we were in.

Let me explain . . .

We were holidaying as ever on the Greek island of Naxos, which lovely destination is reached by us from Athens by means of a 30-minute flight with Sky Express.

This Greek-based operator has been proving most agreeable in the three or four years we have been using it. Not the least of its pluses, for outward-bound travellers, is an open-to-all lounge where food and drinks are dispensed free of charge.

Lately, though, as we learned within hours of arrival on our holiday island, the airline’s reliability had become questionable. Friends who left Naxos the previous week had been delayed on their Athens flight by an hour and a half.

This immediately suggested possibly problems for us who, conscious of excellent time-keeping in the past, had made things a bit tight for our return. We had opted for a 5.20pm Sky Express flight, arriving just before 6pm in Athens, with the British Airways service home at 7.55pm.

At once, we decided it would be prudent on the way back to leave behind our large suitcases and cram everything into hand luggage.

Thus, in the event of delay, we would have no need to go to the luggage carousel or to the BA check-in, proceeding straight to the departure gate with boarding passes on the iPhone.

The 20 days of the holiday passed – time largely spent reading in the sunshine, an activity – or rather inactivity – punctuated by occasional dips in the pool and the preparation of meals for ourselves and the semi-resident cats.

Owing to the need to furnish photographs for this page, I show the two most frequent diners. The other picture is of a traditional restaurant (Bairaktaris Taverna, in Monastiraki) we visited in Athens.

The last day came with a carefree morning, a final al fresco lunch, and a drive to the airport and the discovery that our flight was 40 minutes late. This proved to be a significant understatement, for it was soon reported that the plane had yet to leave Athens.

It eventually arrived just before 7pm and we were on our way a minute or two after. There was clearly no chance of our BA flight, though the Naxos airport staff were insisting we’d make it.

An absurd notion, of course: the British Airways Airbus – the last BA flight of the day – was pushing off from the stand as we bussed from our plane to the terminal.

What to do? A helpful young man from Skyserv ‘fast tracked’ us through the airport to a multi-airline ticket office where the possibility of a 9pm easyJet plane to Gatwick was presented.

A big snag, though, was a strict one-hand-bag-per-person rule. We each had two. The large ones with wheels were already rammed full with the contents of the abandoned suitcases, so the smaller bags could not be accommodated in them unless emptied and squashed flat, and possibly not even then.

Around my body were festooned the clothes from my little bag, among them that second pair of trousers, which in my haste I omitted to belt, with the aforementioned consequences,

We had just concluded that two bags could never become one when we learned they wouldn’t need to. The easyJet flight was full.

The final hope that day was a Wizz Air flight to Luton, also scheduled for 9pm but – heaven be praised! – running half an hour late. There were two seats on this, though not together, and for an extra 40 Euros – a total charge jut short of €350 – we could each have two bags.

During the 20-minute slog along moving walkways to the departure gate – the Athens satellite for budget airlines is a long, long way – I managed to contact the taxi company that would soon be sending a vehicle on the fruitless errand of collecting us from Heathrow Terminal 5.

Could they get us a cab at Luton just before midnight and how would I go about paying the driver? (Pre-payment using Paypal is the company’s usual modus operandi.)

The operator said a car would be there, and that the £70 I had already paid would be sufficient. I could hardly believe my ears.

The attitude of Onward Travel Solutions amazed and delighted me – as I said in the thank-you email sent when we were safely back in Oxford.

Their performance, I told them, hugely impressed me and was one of the few redeeming features of an otherwise distressing episode.