SEVERAL years ago on holiday, I was spending a pleasant few hours in a crowded water park with my family when a rather large thunderstorm swept in and sent most people scurrying away for shelter.

Everyone except the Scots, of course.

There were around half a dozen families in the cafeteria cracking on with the picnics while waiting for the rain to stop.

We all knew it would, of course, and sure enough blazing sunshine returned and around a dozen Scottish kids had the time of their lives in the deserted water park they now had all to themselves.

We Scots know and understand rain. It comes with years of practice.

We can instinctively tell a passing shower from a day-long deluge and dress and make plans accordingly.

Light showers are no barrier to golf or even hanging the washing out, while prolonged downpours just means the big coat comes out as you head to somewhere indoors – probably the pub.

However, this week saw the mother of all deluges that caught out several thousand of us as we headed to Hampden for Scotland’s match against Georgia.

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We may know about rain and how to cope with it, but this was a whole different ball game.

It was actually sore.

It was as if a Norse god had decided to seek revenge for the smash and grab raid in Oslo a few days earlier. Only they’d become distracted and had forgotten to turn the rain off again.

The journey from Mount Florida station to the stadium took more than and hour as fans in shorts and shades huddled for shelter in tenement closes before making a run for the next one.

Then But on arrival the queues were horrendous mainly because the e-ticketing system couldn’t cope with the rain.

For the uninitiated, e-tickets are basically QR codes which you get emailed and store on your phone and you place them under a scanner at the turnstile and off you go.

Really organised people also print them off just in case.

However, in a biblical storm phones were hopeless as they were too wet to open while paper tickets turned to mush after about 10 seconds in the rain.

This caused major problems but the queues were kept going mainly by the most organised and sensible people on the planet.

Women with poly pockets.

A quick rummage in the handbag and out popped pristine, dry tickets for the group and on they went.

That, in a nutshell, reinforced the difference between a man and a woman that normally manifests itself at airports to catching a holiday flight.

A man will normally rely on a single jacket or shirt pocket to carry the holiday essentials – namely, his passport and boarding card.

Everything else is irrelevant.

Women, on the other hand, will ensure that everything that is really needed is safely tucked away in a poly pocket in a handbag.

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Within it will be passports, boarding cards, insurance documents and car hire forms. Just to be safe, birth, marriage, divorce and death certificates are thrown in, too.

Because you just never know.

Most men are baffled by what’s in a womaen’s handbag but there are countless times when we’ve had cause to be extremely grateful to have one close by.

For example, a woman will almost certainly have a corkscrew somewhere about their person.

This has helped save the day on many occasions when an impromptu wine-tasting session suddenly crops up and someone forgot to buy a bottle with a screw cap.

This actually happens far more than you would think and almost certainly far more often than is good for you.

If your car breaks down in the middle of the night in a remote place and there is a woman in the passenger seat, there is no need to panic. She will almost certainly have a toolbox somewhere and will have a far better understanding of how to use fix it than you will. Now as the Tartan Army start tentatively preparing for the Euro Championships in Germany next summer for the Euro’s, there will be some serious prep work gettbeing done.

The best bars in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Gelsenkirchen and Dortmund, will be getting Googled to death over the coming months.

But many (male) fans will forget about the most important things – like where to keep your passport in the rain, mosquito repellent and sun tan lotion.

The tournament will be run with typical ruthless Germany efficiency. But not nearly as efficient as a Scots woman with a poly pocket in her handbag.

Underestimate them at your peril.