Holiday? Give me a break!

Over half-term, we went to France. four children — Raymond, 13, Leonard, 7, Jerry, 5, and Ottoline, 3 — were very excited at the prospect of the holiday.

I, on the other hand, was not that excited — for I know holidays are not made for mothers. Holidays are made for anyone but mothers.

Yet, I never learn. It's as if I have some memory loss that expunges all the horrors of the previous holidays we have been on. All I can see in my mind is six of us, our happy family invading some innocent French town. I visualise us by the sea in the pretty town of St Jean de Luz, Sun shining, bottle of chilled refreshment next to my husband and I and the children gambolling around happily in the sand.

No one is tired or fractious or burnt by the sun. No one has tipped the bottle over or upended their frites into the sand.

A week before we go away, though, reality starts to seep in. For starters, there's all the stuff that needs to be organised before we go away. There's the house to be sorted, the milk to be cancelled and the pets to be hived off on to various kind people.

The first of the problems

Then there's the packing to be done. No one else in my household seems to be able to pack effectively. But it's not just their packing that is the problem. I seem to have some overriding need to pack for all eventualities, which means I pack endless tubes of sun cream, antiseptic paste, Elastoplast, mosquito repellant and Calpol.

On the flight, at least one of my children will spill something, another will kick the chair in front and my daughter will lose the pink sparkling keyring I have just bought her.

My husband will, no doubt, fall asleep. It will be my job to sit with them and try to control them and then apologise to anyone sitting within our vicinity about their behaviour.

As I sat there, at La Reserve in St Jean de Luz near Biarritz in southwest France, it occurred to me that holidays are for everyone else. Husbands lie by swimming pools, reading, drinking refreshments and eating olives. Children play on beaches, go rock pooling, make sandcastles and swim in the sea.

What do mothers do? They get up and down, slathering suntan lotion on their complaining children. They re-inflate armbands, pick books up off the poolside, play Hangman with bored teenagers, find dry towels and slather on more suntan lotion. They find food for their children to eat and ice-creams to cool them down. They order strange food in a foreign language and try to master how to say "no tomatoes".

What mothers do not do is relax, or read, or make friends. They, in short, have no holiday at all.

Lennie and Jerry made friends. Ottoline waddled in and out of the pool. Raymond, when he wasn't playing Hangman with me, lay on a sun lounger and read.

What did I do? I worried about whether the children had got up and were waiting to go down to breakfast. While they were out of the room, I made their beds, found their pyjamas, rinsed out their face cloths, positioned their toothbrushes and went to join them. I then spent all breakfast pouring them hot chocolate (and trying to stop them from spilling it) and going on and on about how eating three pains-au-chocolat was not good for their health.

I worried about what we should do all day. Should we go to Bilbao and look at the Guggenheim over the border in Spain? No one responded with more than a grunt.

On the days when it was cold, I tried to think up games we could play, despite the fact that everyone was despondent, cold and wet.

We looked at crabs clinging to the sea wall. We played in a wet play park. The children asked me to buy them ice-creams. Ottoline got hers stuck in her hair.

Constantly tense

During the day, we sat by the pool or went to the beach, I worried about the children's skin going red and their not drinking enough water. I walked backwards and forwards to a kiosk about 15 minutes away from the hotel to stock up on endless bottles of water. I fretted over whether the two younger kids will drown in the pool if I don't watch them constantly.

On most days, we had a food crisis. The hotel bar and restaurant seemed to open at random times and, as none of us speaks French, it seemed impossible to find out when food might become available.

In the end, my days consisted of my jumping up and down, running around, constantly fretting, ferrying goods about the place and having endless arguments about the merits of putting on suntan lotion.

I ended up wondering why we go on holiday at all. By the time we left, I was exhausted. Then I worried that no one else had enjoyed and felt it was all my fault.

Yet, when we got to the airport to go home, my children turned to me and said: "It's been a great holiday, hasn't it Mum?"

I didn't have the heart to say no.