our holiday in Pickwell, North Devon was so thoroughly miserable I wanted to come home by the evening of arrival. Normally I don't start on my 'I want to go home' rant until the Wednesday.

We arrived to hear the previous weeks visitors had had a week of wall to wall sun and all that entails on a British coastal holiday.

The other added morsel of thrilling relaxation was Pip, 2.5 years worth of abject monstrousness. He is normally ok, admittedly he's the most hard work of the 3 boys but I am figuring that my addled brain has forgotten how hard managing a 2 year old is beacuse I swear on all thing holy that this child is a complete terror. He's a whole ball of needy, non-verbal screaming, proddy, poky, stealing, torment inducing, racing, food refusing, insominacal, brother bating boy. And even though I left his father to deal with him most of the time as I was on the verge of a total mental meltdown, I was close enough to the core to be deeply harangued by it all.

But, being a 2 year old boy who refuses to speak (when asked he can sound out every phoneme, diagraph etc etc but refuses to say actual words) and therefore who cannot tell us by extended non-verbal communication what is going on, it must be hard for him. A new strange environment coupled with extended car journeys must be difficult to deal with. I'll give him his due though, he's great in the car - Sam was puking at Harpenden (10 miles into our journey), Munch was asleep after tiring himself out by doing his 'our we there yet' Simpsons routine from when we left the driveway.And at the end of the day, you can't stay cross with any of them for long because when the truth is told it's not them it's me.