I'm determined to pay credit card bills in full and on time, maintain a watching brief over how much I spend and make an attempt to live if not within my means then within sight of them. So, I decided, in keeping with this new-found sense of financial responsibility, to give up mini-bars when travelling.

Instead of knocking back an outrageously priced refreshment in my room before dinner, I would bring my own, a vow I remembered as I wheeled out of the door of my apartment last week en route for the airport.

"Bugger," I thought as the door clicked behind me. "I forgot to pack a bottle of wine for my girlfriend and I to savour, hee hee...". So I went back inside and checked the cupboard - a bottle of tequila, a bottle of scotch and a bottle of Bacardi but no wine. "This will do," I thought, grabbing the Bacardi bottle, putting it in my cabin bag and congratulating myself on saving at least $20 in mini-bar charges. It's difficult to maintain your sang-froid when you are holding your trousers up with one hand, your shoes in the other hand and your belt between your teeth.

How leather shoes can trigger airport metal detectors remains a mystery but like everyone else I take them off, hope I'm not wearing the pair of socks with the hole in the toe I've been meaning to throw out and pass through.

Being a law-abiding person, I don't pack aerosol cans of deodorant in my checked baggage. Instead, I put them in my carry-on luggage which means they have to be checked by security staff and if they haven't got a cap, they are confiscated. I don't know what happens to the millions of pairs of nail scissors, corkscrews and cans of aerosol confiscated every year, but I suspect that there may be those in the security industry who have extremely well tended nails and never suffer from body odour.

Compared with passing through security checks, getting your seat allocation is a relatively stress-free procedure as long as you are possessed of the saintly quantities of patience needed to endure the glacial pace of the queue as it edges forward centimetre by centimetre and the minutes to your flight time tick away.

So I shuffled forward and was finally called, performing the usual fumble with the driver's licence ID check. As I grabbed my boarding pass, my cabin bag slid to the floor. Pocketing my pass, I picked up the bag and headed towards security, being suddenly aware of a strange smell akin to that of anaesthetic. My first thought was that some workmen must have been using industrial glue somewhere in the terminal.

Sill moving, I swung the cabin bag in my hand when suddenly I heard a distinct "Clink!". A second later a torrent of clear liquid gushed through the porous material of the bag. Ripping open the zip, I watched as my in-flight paperback, wallet, notebook, assorted pens and some extra underdaks I'd stuffed in at the last moment submerged beneath one and a half litres of Bacardi, the shards of the shattered bottle protruding like icicles from the surface of this white rum lake.

There was only one thing to do. Panic.

So I ran. "Toilets!" I thought. "Oh God! Where are the toilets?!" Then I saw the sign, dashed through the door, reached inside the bag and pulled out the shattered neck of the Bacardi bottle, cutting myself as I did.

The man using the urinal took one look at the lunatic standing there with a jagged bottle in one hand with blood streaming down his wrist and fled without zipping. I turned the bag upside down in the sink. The flight left in 20 minutes. Bacardi and glass splashed and shattered into the porcelain. There was blood everywhere, red splashes now decorating my pale blue shirt. Men kept walking in, taking one look and leaving. I threw away the paperback and the notebook. I grabbed toilet paper and tried to stop the bleeding. I had to catch the flight.

   "What's that smell?" asked the security woman.
   "Bacardi," I said as she wrinkled her nose and looked at me in disgust, presuming I'd drunk a bottle of the stuff the previous night and that the perspiration running down my face was 60 per cent proof.

I was one of the last to board, the eyes and then noses of everyone on the aircraft following me down the aisle as they beheld this blood-splattered human distillery lurching towards his seat. The smell filled the aircraft for the entire flight. I was thankful they'd banned smoking for if anyone had lit a match, the aircraft would have exploded.