Have just been reading through 'Escape' - The Guardian's holiday supplement. Realised it's the closest thing to a holiday I've had in over a year. Last year, I spent 5 days house-sitting for my boss in Brighton but I had to come back for meetings and take his cat to the vets so only had 3 days of holiday. The year before that, I had a long weekend in Dublin and totally fell in love with the place. Utterly relaxing, cheap drink and loads of friendly eye-candy.

The year before that, I spent a week in Belgium and wished it had only been four days. Expensive food and boring sights; the very small and subtley titled 'Pissing Boy' and a 200 foot tall model of an atom. You can imagine the council meeting. 'OK, we haven't got much of a tourist trade and we need to do something to sort it. What's that? Pissing is funny. Oh, great idea. We'll have a cherub wetting itself, that'll bring them flocking. Ooh - and atoms, right. They're supposed to be really really small. So if we make one that's really really big, it's ironic, yeah, and everyone will see how interesting we can be.'

Am definitely overdue for a holiday. On the plus side, at least I haven't had to deal with sunburn. I've got the classic white to lobster-red to white skin. Not flattering and very painful. So I stick to the factor 75 and stay white, while all around me long-legged tanned babes abound, looking horribly healthy in that 'should be in a tampon ad rollerskating with a pair of dalmations on leads' kind of way.