There are two notable downsides to this particular time-distance-money option. First, you really are extra-specially stuffed if you test positive, as plenty of people have been, regardless of symptoms or vaccination status. Much better to learn that your holiday is ruined the day before you set off, rather than when you’re already packed and standing at the check-in counter. Second, you’ve got three hours to kill as you nervously await the results in the bowels of Hillingdon, with Hounslow to the east and Slough to the west, wandering amid aircraft hangers; more boring even than the duty-free arcade – or so we assumed before getting there.

Still, we turned up (15 minutes late) with optimism in our hearts. The centre was easy as pie to find by postcode, which was our first surprise. There was free parking. The staff were exceptionally cheery. The cattle-herding lanes were empty; free of queues, free of stress. And it didn’t matter that we were late (our second surprise).

We were tested at 5.15pm. Our obvious first stop after that was to the nearest pub, where we were sitting with a pint and a glass of wine by 5.21pm. The Three Magpies, offering fine views over Bath Road’s traffic jams to the rear, was vibrant in decor; one half dressed to the nines in Christmas gear, the other half Halloween-themed, but was, again, fairly quiet aside from a handful of BA-uniformed employees loitering at the bar. Here we played ‘refresh the Collinson website every four minutes’ to learn of our fate. I’d just recovered from a hideous cold and despite repeatedly testing negative for Covid on lateral flows over the past week, was convinced the PCR would come up with a different result. “It happened to Tom Daley before the Olympics,” I assured my boyfriend Julius for the eighth time that day (and it did, the diver tested negative thrice by lateral flow before getting a PCR positive this year), at which point he suggested we stop jabbing the refresh button and take a walk. 

Here lay perhaps our biggest surprise: that the surrounding region of Bath Road is really very green, and not without activities. If you’re leaving your car in long-term parking while you’re away, then you’ll still have it with you, and you’ve got a host of options within a 20-minute driving radius – two golf clubs to the north and a trampoline park for the kids; or to the east, the National Trust’s Osterley Park, a Georgian estate with lovely landscaped gardens. If that all sounds a tad ambitious, we found some perfectly pleasant land on which to stretch our legs as the sun set over Heathrow a little closer.