Holiday planning

Grit is going on holiday! Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la! Grit's posts might become erratic now, after all, there's such a lot to do! I have to find my bikini and fold my bikini and pack my bikini, and then unpack my bikini to re-pack my bikini, and then I have to find my beauty bag and ...

OK, the bikini's just a fantasy. Along with the beauty bag. But the holiday! Tra-la-la! I've just booked a caravan in the Romney Marshes.

This is all Dig's fault. He's off again on his not-holidays, slumming it in 5-star hotels in South-east Asia and, this is Grit's mean and dark side, I can't bear it.

For a start it's not fair. He's going and I'm not. It's so not fair I could flatten myself to the floor and hammer the ground with my fists and scream until I am red in the face. Because before children, I did go. I admit I'm nothing but a freeloading good-time girl who has lived off the back of her husband's glory for more than a decade. And there's nothing wrong with that when you're being picked up at Singapore airport in a classic Mercedes, I can tell you. So now it's so cruel and horrible and heartless to leave me at home minding wretched children who I will sell for medical experiments on Day 2 of his absence because they are moaning and groaning and whimpering 'Where's Daddy?' 37 times a minute, that I now have to thump the furniture and make a stand.

'Don't think I'm staying here!' I shout to Dig, who's checking whether he can fit in a side visit to Bangladesh. 'I'm not staying at home you know!' I add, pointing to the carpet. 'I hope you realise I'm not going to be here! So I hope you don't need any fax sending out to you in Singapore again!' He's clicking through now on the BA site to see if they do a business class to Dhaka from Manila. 'I am not here!' I shout. 'I'm going to live in a caravan in the marsh! So there!'

I don't care. Well I do, obviously. But I'm jolly well not admitting it to Dig. Big Pig Dig. I'm coming over all If-he-can-do-it-I-can, all independent now, doing my own thing and dragging the kids along to Kent in the back of the car, screaming all the way, probably, when they're not wailing, 'Where's Daddy? When's Daddy coming home? Can Daddy come to live with us in the swamp?'

I should send the kids off to boarding school, then I could go off travelling the world with Big Pig Dig, who I would probably call Lovely Husband Dig then, with free cocktails and Molton Brown toiletries in a special BA Business Class bag. Then it would be Lovely Husband Dig and thank goodness the children are being looked after by proper teachers in a proper school where they can't get out because the gates are locked.

While we resolved to try and get the children travelling as much as possible with Dig, who goes everywhere telling people what to do with their commas, and despite the possibilities Dig's life offers, we're so often stymied by cost or time. The kids are aged 7 and we can't squish three of them and two of us into one hotel room. We can't shunt them off by themselves into a separate room, so we need two rooms, double the cost, preferably two interconnecting rooms, double the cost, or a suite, expensive. I can't leave them behind, and I can't go without them. Or then Dig's visits have to be quick, because he has to come home, change, and be gone in the opposite direction. Which would make the whole travel experience for children short, exhausting and unrewarding.

So Dig's planning his journey to South-east Asia and we're planning our journey to Kent. We will pop into a castle on the way and we'll travel about a bit on the South coast and stare glumly at the Channel for a few days. The children will go through Sussex to re-enact the battle of the Saxons and Normans again while I shout at them in bad French. We'll trudge up to Canterbury to get a pilgrim's meal of fish and chips in a lay-by, and we'll march down to Dover castle to stare out to sea.

All in all, we'll make the best of things in the English drizzle and Dig will come home slightly tanned and complaining about the sub-tropical heat. And I will say we had a lovely time in Kent. You should have been there. And Dig will say next time he might. But first he has to get himself to Brazil, with maybe a side visit to Argentina thrown in. And sorry about the wedding anniversary, which he will have forgotten.

And I'm looking at that North Wales caravan site again right now.