London - Sitting in a mildew-infested beach hut last week, drinking weak tea and watching the offspring gamely wrestling with the wind, rain and waves, a wicked thought crossed my mind.
Forget second marriages: there’s no better example of the triumph of hope over experience than a family summer holiday.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. According to a survey, one in four of us admits coming home feeling more stressed than we were before our break.
Reasons cited include overspending and travel mishaps. But that’s not the half of it.
Getting there is an ordeal in itself. For a start, it takes me at least three months of gruelling gym sessions just to get to the stage where I feel even vaguely able to show the world the tops of my arms.
Then there’s the washing, ironing, packing, re-housing of dog, goldfish and guinea pig, the mustering of essentials — pills, contact lenses, spectacles, sunglasses, Kindle, iPad, laptop, phones, the tangle of power leads that follows us wherever we go like some mutant spider, books, vital teddies, masks, flippers, bodyboards and all manner of dubious beach inflatables.
But it’s not until finally ensconced in the idyllic holiday getaway that the hard work really starts. Now the challenge is to have actual fun.
In this respect, British-based holidays are trickier than foreign ones. Give most kids a beach and some sunshine, and they’re happy.
The trouble arises when you gamble on the British weather — as we did by heading to the South Coast with two other families just as summer staged a disappearing act.
Little did we realise we would be driven to the brink of insanity — and bankruptcy — by the need to fill the rain-sodden hours of daylight.
There was a horror trip to Poundland in search of cheap crafting materials to keep seven children — aged three to 12 — entertained while the rain fell in bucket-loads, and the glueing of pink sequins to almost every flat surface in the rented house (there goes the deposit).
Or how about the jaunt to the bogus “arts and crafts centre”, which consisted of a cafe smelling strongly of Toilet Duck selling overpriced suet-based foodstuffs and a bunch of hippies with multi- coloured hair trying to flog useless things made out of driftwood.
The “thrill-packed” dinosaur theme park was a memorable low: £20 (about R180) to view a rusty T.Rex opening and shutting its jaw as a barely concealed tape recorder played roaring noises from behind dusty plastic grass.
But my personal favourite was the seafront arcade with beer-soaked carpets inhabited by unsmiling locals watching in a menacing fashion as the offspring frittered away their pocket money on rigged machines that promised untold delights, but delivered only disappointment and tears.
Meanwhile, the Nivea “child sensitive” sun cream factor 50 I bought to shield the family from the non-existent sun stained beyond use three swimsuits, as well as suspiciously stripping the ink off the pages of my book.
As for the food, I had mussels so overcooked they were like tiny bits of carpet, “fresh fish” clearly straight from the freezer and “local” ice cream so full of chemicals it failed to melt even when accidentally left out overnight.
Meanwhile, the house we rented — which looked gorgeous on the internet — turned out to be in the middle of a suburban sprawl.
Every day we were awoken at 8am by the sound of roadworks directly beneath our bedroom window.
In this respect, at least, we found ourselves grateful for the rain since it put a stop to the drilling.
Still, it could have been worse: only one of us came down with a temperature. And the sun did eventually come out. Just in time for the journey home.
Daily Mail