There is no doubting the consistency of things that don’t go the way they should with the Robinsons or anyone vaguely related to them.

Take my son Lucas and his girlfriend Chloe. They have recently come home from the UK for a couple of weeks to visit family and friends before returning for another 12 month of work.

Or they were going to, until a chain of events unfolded.

Our house was a place of much excitement with the impending arrival of the two travellers, but before they arrived they were having a three-day stopover in Dubai.

Now Lucas is like me in many ways, including letting the “other half” arrange most things in his life, and he rarely interferes.

But at 1am the other day, as the plane is about to touch down in Dubai, he asks his partner in life how many nights of accommodation she had booked.

“Three,” she replied, but when he pointed out that it was the early hours of the morning, they both realised they were a night short.

So, just like his father with half a case of the sooks, he is left to negotiate a few hours of accommodation at an airport motel before they move to their booked holiday.

It was at this stage he realised that there was a trick to the national currency called dirham. The one he had exchanged for English pounds in London would have been handy in Morocco – he had the wrong dirham.

After finding a currency exchange, he was able to get the right stuff and secure his grossly over-priced but seedy digs.

After a few hours of sleep and a case of sooks really starting to gain momentum, they then headed to the “Royal something or other” for their three nights.

Now, one would think the word royal may been a giveaway, but upon arrival in a rather grand foyer and on mention of their booking, they were whisked away to bigger, grander, bling-bling foyer in the “Tower”. Here they were met by an entourage of underlings with champagne and face towels.

Apparently, warning bells started to tinkle at this stage and when Lucas asked how many dirham it was and did a rough calculation in his head, he figured that 500 pounds was over the top.

So as they swiped his credit card, he learned the Arabic word for “declined” on two occasions.

With the bells now ringing and niceties forgotten, he then asked: “How much is this in pounds?”

“It’s 1500 pounds,” came the toothy reply, as the Wurtulla boy’s knees stated to buckle and his mind produced visions of jumping off the “Tower” if he couldn’t pay.

But, like his father, with more pride than money, and of course the threat of a 500 pound cancellation charge and memories of the seedy airport motel in his mind, he went for another card and copped it sweet, with the vow that they may as well have a good time, which they did.

Apparently there were a number of staff waiting outside their room, so that every time they went in and out, someone rushed in with chocolates, etc.

If it were me, I would have given the hinges on the door a good hammering to get my money’s worth.

When they got back to Wurtulla, the first task was to get a copy of his mother’s and grandparents’ original birth certificates so he could work for another year in London – as his mother’s side of the family were 10 pound Poms.

Now here was their next hurdle, his mother – my wife – is the absolute filing queen. Everything has its place. Whenever something is asked for, the terse reply is: “Look in the filing cabinet under whatever letter it starts with.”

Well, under B there was every original birth certificate they didn’t need.

So as it sits now, the kids may be here a little longer while they wait for some public servant in England to do something, which I am sort of happy about.

And I’m loving the mileage I am getting out of the breakdown of the once-infallible filing system.