After her brush with death in a Spanish hotel that collapsed, journalist Moreen Simpson is back on top form, telling it how it is in her weekly column for the Aberdeen Evening Express.

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The world and his dog now know I’m fully justified in being a worrier. Although with my holiday from hell I failed miserably to anticipate the exact nature of the disaster.

I didn’t miss the plane, I didn’t forget my passport. I didn’t lose my cases. The hotel and resort were perfect and I didn’t get a dose of the skitters.

But why, oh why, didn’t I spend weeks agonising over the possibility of the hotel falling down? Silly Mo.

A week on, my sooch’s a bit calmer, though I still shudder how close so many folk came to death.

And as I look back on that night and the following day, I discover some twists of fate, as well as the lighter moments.

Take my postcard to the folkies in the office. I wrote it at the beginning of the holiday, when my son had just told me on the phone that one of my colleagues, also on holiday in Majorca, had made the front page of the EE when his coach burst into flames.

I promptly wrote on my card to my fellow hacks:

“Hope I get a shock, horror story like Alex.”

Spooky. Incidentally, the picture on the card showed the block which collapsed.

Then there was the fact I’d spent most of our fortnight grouching about not having a sea view, as requested.

I’d been all for demanding Thomson’s move us. And would have, had my man not instructed me, in the nicest possible way, to shut it.

Didn’t stop me pointing at the balconies of the only five rooms in the hotel with sea views every day, muttering: “One of those sods is in my room.”

All of them were destroyed…

And on the first night we twigged the unwritten rule of the wonderful buffet restaurant. Make sure you hit it well before 8.30, otherwise the choicest morsels will be gone. And boy, did some of those pensioners know how to pile their plates. Maison Nosebag, my man named it.

As a result, the vast majority of us fought our way to the troughs between 7pm and 8pm. The bedrooms went down just after 8pm, with not a soul inside.

For four hours after it happened, the 400-plus of us milled around the reception areas, bar and pools – at first in hushed shock.

But as we grasped how lucky so many had been to escape unscathed, a sort of blitz-spirit developed, possibly helped by fortifying glasses of brandy.

A guy next to me from Glasgow suddenly started humming Flower of Scotland.

A couple of others joined in with the words.

Suddenly, everyone – including the English, Irish and Welsh – were belting it out at the top of their voices. Courage and defiance. I had a wee weepie.

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