With half-term approaching, many readers will soon be saddling up with Ryanair. I got aboard before the rush, flying out to France for a long weekend. Given that the one thing middle-class people love more than cheap Ryanair tickets is moaning about cheap Ryanair tactics, what follows is by way of a heads-up, as the end of winter begins to peep over the horizon. Yep, the fun game of cat and mouse, hundreds of thousands of scurrying rodents going up against Big Moggie Michael O’Leary, will soon commence!

So, what news from the cut-price front line? Well, if the 16.20 on Sunday service from Toulouse to Stansted is anything to go by, Michael has taken the gloves off as regards luggage in 2026. The plane left and arrived on time.

No surplus taxiing in the Haute-Garonne, no tedious circling over Essex. In between wheels up and down the cabin crew were great. Back in the Pink City, however, the gate staff, now on €2.50 commission for every oversized item intercepted, with the monthly cap on these extra earnings removed, were absolutely horrible. One woman in particular was an object lesson in the abuse of power.

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My family happened to be at the head of the priority queue. The nasty woman pointed, wordlessly and therefore rudely, to the metal bag sizer. One by one, my wife, then me, my daughter, my son, stepped forward to our doom. We all failed. Not on length or width but depth.

As in, our cases all bulged out of the open side of the sizer. Well, not bulged, more poked. Peeked, even. But, crucially, a bulge, a poke or a peek, or a non-peek, non-poke or non-bulge, are subjective judgments. And this was not a woman acquainted with handing out the benefit of the doubt.

So then we were all in the business of kneeling on the floor, cases open, belongings exposed to public view, hastily transferring items into hand luggage, putting on jumpers, swapping stuff around between the four of us. Meanwhile, the next woman in line, similarly rejected, had refused to repack. “Go and see my colleague about the fee,” she was told.

Before long, as the grim sentry simply said “no” to most of the queue, chaos approached. Luckily, homebound Brits at Toulouse on a Sunday afternoon constitute a pretty docile manifest. Larnaca on a Saturday night might be a different story.

My case, and my son’s, were accepted second time around. My daughter required three attempts before she got the nod. My wife, by then wearing a sweater, a gilet, a fleece and a winter coat, was fourth time lucky.

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She expressed her dismay at the treatment, pointing out how silly it was for dozens of people to move their belongings from one bag to another, when surely what was important was the overall weight, something which at no point was measured. “Watch your words, madam,” the nasty woman warned, unbelievably taking offence. “When you fly Ryanair, you have to be on point.” Maybe she should get a job with ICE.

I rather admire O’Leary. I appreciate his no-frills, high-volume, low-cost business model. I like the way he saw off that weirdo Elon Musk recently. But come on, there’s no need for bad manners. We hear a lot these days, rightly, about how staff have the right not to be insulted at work. Equally, customers have the right not to be humiliated and hectored on their travels.

Maybe Ryanair should start making its own suitcases. It’d save a lot of bother.

On me head, Madonna

I love the idea of Madonna as a “soccer mom”, cheering on her twin 13-year-old girls as they turned out for Tottenham’s women’s academy on Saturday. It being February, I don’t think Madge was wearing a pointy bra, fishnets and fingerless lace gloves. But, come the warmer weather, no doubt her signature outfits will be on show.

But in other respects, is Madonna, I wonder, just like many other soccer prodigy parents? Does she prowl around, yelling at the referee, abusing the linesman, ordering the coach to play her kids up front and don’t even think about subbing them off, mate? Does she scream, “Do ’er! Just fackin’ do ’er!” by way of an instruction to neutralise the opposition’s star player?

Or is she more the much loved saintly motherly type, making stacks of jam sandwiches and giving the entire midfield a lift home in the back of her old Volvo? Funnily enough, I reckon the latter.

Pensions are seriously painful

One in eight of us would rather spend an hour at the dentist than an hour making plans for our retirement. To which I say: what! Only one in eight? The dentist isn’t so bad, not once you’re numbed up. Whereas contemplating your pension provision, savings, assets (or lack of same) and realising you’ve got to keep grafting until you’re 83, that’s seriously painful.

Even if your calculations reveal that you can bin it tomorrow, crunching numbers instead of doing anything else, such as sawing your toes off with a blunt fish knife, is always best postponed. A little light root canal work is a holiday compared with studying bank statements. As for the dental hygienist, all that scraping and scouring, picking and polishing, followed by the inevitable lecture about flossing, that’s half an hour that fully justifies the dread.