My hope is that the photofit image will be sufficiently different from my disguise for me to evade capture.

A jolly person from Hoseasons called me this week to confirm that the question mark over our holiday boating trip on the Norfolk Broads had now been lifted. It had been threatened by the pincer movement of on one hand a global pandemic and my own shady past on the other.

I’ve got form, you see.

The Roberts family, dating back to the early 70s, would often take their weekly summer holiday aboard a modest boat somewhere on the British waterways.

On these holidays, enveloped by serene countryside, we pretty much managed to completely wreck each craft that was hired to us.

The destruction took many and various forms. I vividly remember every morning, on the day we were due to return the boat, being drilled with the story my dad had concocted to explain away the damage to each boat we brought back.

Our first foray, which was on the Oxford Canal, pretty much set the tone for the subsequent years. We were complete novices and as such we dutifully booked for the one-hour training before heading off under our own steam. But this simple precaution was merely wafer thin defence against our colossal ineptitude.

After waving us goodbye we set off and after a mile or so were faced with a simple choice on which way to turn to get on to the canal proper. Minutes later we were full steam ahead in completely the wrong direction.

The first bridge came into view. It looked a little low.

The first girder scraped, loudly and ominously, on the top of the small transparent visor through which the helmsman (I use that term loosely) was steering the boat. It brought down a shower of rust. The next girder snapped the perspex window clean off, with a very loud crack of disintegration we were covered with splintered windscreen and rusty girder.

A grounding, a bodged engine repair and a glancing blow with an oncoming barge and a week later we returned the tatty remains of that vessel.

But I’m afraid it was but a glimpse of what was to come.

On one nervy occasion we had to gingerly float back to the hiring quay without using reverse. After a tussle with a lock door on the Grand Union canal meant for some reason if the mooring required reverse throttle the whole outboard motor would suddenly lurch up and out of the water like a hungry crocodile snapping at its prey.

Since this spate of watery vacations I have never ventured back into the boat yard.

Not, that is, until now. I am convinced there will be a photo fit picture distributed to all reputable boatyards. Do not hire a boat to a man fitting this description.

I’ve got the dark glasses and cap. I shall loiter about in the background while my wife collects the keys.

If what I fear, that whilst walking across the gravel to the boat, the typing receptionist lifts a head, glances over, puts two and two together and releases the dogs, I’ve briefed the family. We sprint to the barge, leap on and fend off all further boarders with the boat hook.

Fellow floating holiday makers, you have been warned.