Yes, there have occasionally been delays, and changes to the schedule, but, over the last 40 years or so, we’ve always made our annual week-long sojourn on the island.

We’ve been pretty lucky, when it comes to CalMac.

However, that doesn’t mean that we’ve shaken off the more general Arran holiday curse. Almost every year, something goes wrong on the run up to our trip. I do wonder if the island doesn’t want us there. It tries to reject Soutars, in the same way as it doesn’t host any grey squirrels, foxes, moles or weasels. We are a feral species that compromises the delicate ecosystem.

I sometimes think we should give the destination a break from our motley crew, and go to another place that’s less resistant to our presence.

However, I don’t want to break my long-running four decade long streak, so I would probably swim if I had to.

Also, my nieces and nephew have now caught the bug, and say they want to keep going, even when they have their own families.

My middle niece says she’ll even take us along, when we’re very elderly. I’m sure she’ll change her mind when she grows up, so I’ll get her to sign something now.

In previous years, the curse has extended to various travel mishaps.

There was the time that my mum, when she was slightly younger and still driving, accidentally ended up at Troon instead of Ardrossan. She was using an internal map, but her knowledge was on the fritz.

Since she’s a technophobe, who has no satnav and can only use a mobile to answer calls, she had to describe the scenery so we could work out where the heck she’d gone.

“Is the sea on your left or right?”

Once we’d sussed it out, we directed her to the appropriate port and she, miraculously, made our sailing.

The weather tried to get us another year, but we made it onto the ship, while it flipped and slipped about like an oiled-up Buckaroo. Only the fearlessness of my nieces – then just tinies – stopped me from freaking out and refusing to sail. Still, we made it.

Another time, while we were waiting for our return ship at Brodick ferry terminal, there were CalMac engineering problems, so our set sailing time was scrapped and instead it was boarding on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

Mum, who usually has a bladder of steel, decided that this was a good time to go to the loo, but fell in the cubicle and had to pull the emergency cord. We didn’t know what had happened, so we felt guilty about cursing her while we lost our hard won early morning place at the front of the queue.

More importantly, apart from a few bruises, she was okay, and we still managed to squeak onto the boat home. A miracle.

My sister has not been immune to the curse. There was the year of the vomiting child, who managed to chunder enthusiastically all the way from Edinburgh to Ardrossan.

While we were in the ferry queue, she once managed to fling open her door too enthusiastically – well, the wind wrenched it out of her hand, she says – and dented another passenger’s fancy Range Rover. He was fuming, and an argument and tears ensued.

Another time, her car was written off about a week before our holiday.

This time round, it was our turn to experience the curse.

A few weeks before our July trip, our car, while stationary and thankfully with nobody in it, got shoulder bumped by an over enthusiastic bin lorry. In the same way as a frog might get trampled by an elephant, the larger vehicle lumbered onwards without even noticing the goo on its feet.

The insurance people decided that, though the damage looked superficial to us, with only a bit of Cornish-pasty-style crimping round the undercarriage, the car would have to be scrapped. That’s because, despite the fact that it was still roadworthy, to replace the damaged panel would cost more than the value of the ancient old VW.

It seemed too soon for its demise, even if it does make a lot of strange squeaking sounds, and the sight of it does seem to have an immediate laxative effect on seagulls.

Thus, it was to go to the knackers yard, but not immediately. We could keep it for now, until they said the word. How predictable, we thought. Here comes the curse.

Amazingly though, we were okay, and they said we could postpone the car’s execution and have one week’s grace.

Arran, here we come. We’re like cleavers, in that you cannot shake us off. However, the curse had one last punt.

The day before our journey, my phone inexplicably died. And I couldn’t remember any of my passwords.

I had the holiday cottage booking saved on it. Eventually, I mustered up all my IT whizzkid knowledge to crack into my email account on my laptop, so I could attempt to find the message with the keycode.

Except it wasn’t attached, as promised. At the end of the message from the letting company, “our office closes at 5pm”.

4:50pm, on a Friday, they re-sent me the keycode. Not attached. At 4:57pm, they sent me the actual keycode. Bingo.

We have the car, and we have the numbers.

And another Arran curse was foiled. Until next year.