My guide book to Tunisia arrived today, along with the Rough Guide map, a spare memory card for my camera and a very dangerous looking travel charger for my iPod and mobile phone. I have just spent the last 20 minutes reading about the city I will be staying in and how to turn down sexual advances from Tunisian men! I am really looking forward to the trip abet with slight trepidation of going by myself.

I also ordered the book “Wall and Piece” by the famous graffiti artist Banksy. I have been flicking through some of the pages this morning and I really find his work quite exciting. He has managed to place very thought provoking artwork in some very original and inaccessible places.

In two weeks time I am off to Tunisia, a country in North Africa, for a week in the sun!

Late last year Roz and James won the holiday as part of a call-in and win game in a magazine. However the holiday was only for one person and they were not allowed to pay for a second person to go along. Roz very kindly donated the prize to me and sent off the claim form in my name.

A few weeks later I received a ‘holiday voucher’ in the post. The holiday voucher entitled me to a 4* all-inclusive holiday to Tunisia that would be allocated to me at some point in the following 18 months. All I had to do was reply within 14 days to confirm that I wanted to accept the offer. It was fairly obvious that they didn’t want people to accept as you had to: meet the 14 day deadline, be prepared to travel on your own, travel with a minimum of 7 days notice, the dates you were allocated were the dates you had to go and you couldn’t choose your own dates and finally your dates would be sent to you by letter at some point in the following 18 months. I decided that I didn’t have anything to lose by filling out the acceptance form and sending it off.

Nothing happened for several months and then two days ago I received a letter telling me my allocated dates and flight information. If I wanted to accept the holiday I had to confirm within 7 days and pay the new Gordon Brown fuel duty of £40. I quickly logged into the work computer, put in a request for time off work and wrote a cheque for the forty quid. I noticed that the return address was in Chippenham so the next day I dropped the letter off at the promotions company office during my lunch hour.

Then today I received a call from the travel agent telling me that I had been accepted and that they were processing the booking! I get my letter of confirmation in the post either tomorrow or Monday. How fab is that? A free holiday to Tunisia! I hope I get to see where Star Wars was filmed and also Life of Brian.

Need to go and buy a guide book and some sunglasses now!