'So here's the question: what do an expensive hotel in central Bologna, an unspoiled fishing village, and Walt Disney World have in common? Answer: not a lot. Prospects for our first family holiday look less than rosy when we can't even agree on a destination.

Wish I knew somebody with similar family demographics who's trodden this path before. Colleagues, where they've spawned at all, are polarised between supine capitulation to CenterParcs, and reading tours of Slovenia. No point asking my sister, who just follows the rest of London to Cornwall for three weeks.'

It's one of life's tragic ironies that nothing leaves you needing a holiday so much as - a holiday. As Helen, with a car full of bike-mad husband, bloodthirsty four-year-old and dysfunctional adolescent, is about to find out...

I'm in the mood for some contemporary fiction, and so I treated myself to a big box of books with good reviews. Of course, the idea of a family holiday hit a nerve...well, wouldn't it with everyone? Flashbacks of partly wonderful, partly terrifying trips with my people to the Lake District have made me curious to find out what hells other people experience.