This post won't make much sense to most people, but I thought it was hilarious.

Yesterday, Mattgreen, Izzy and I went to meet our Estrela breeder. We were talking about our puppy over breakfast this morning.

Mattgreen: We could always breed a litter ourselves.
Me: I don't think so! It's really complicated, you have to have loads of specialist knowledge. I tell you what, why don't you go to Champdogs (the dog-related forum I read) and post, 'Hi, I've never had a dog before but I'm getting a puppy and I'm going to start breeding straight away' and see what they say?
Mattgreen: Ah, hmm, yeah.
Me: Come back an hour later and see what responses you've got!
Mattgreen: And then I'll go to rec.jyhad (Matt's Vampire newsgroup) and post, 'I think errata is the best thing ever!' And then I'll go to Period Property (historic property conservation forum) and post, 'I'm thinking of covering my entire house in cement render, can anybody recommend any companies?'
Alice: (laughing) And then you can go to The Thirty boards (group of friends we play online games with, mostly American) and post, 'I think George Bush is the best president ever...'
Mattgreen: '... and all Marines are pussies. Oh, and I just ran over a Pomeranian.'

There is a small, evil part of my personality that thinks this is actually a highly entertaining idea. It's lucky that Nice Alicey is in control today.

I recently went to buy Izzy's school uniform from Marks and Spencers. We got to the till to pay and the cashier was all soppy. We had the following actual conversation:

Cashier: Oh, it's so sweet when they go to school for the first time!
Me: Mmm, yeah.
Cashier: (to Izzy) I bet you're really excited, aren't you?
Izzy: Mmm, yeah.
Cashier: I bet Mummy will shed a few tears on the first day, won't she?
Me: Nah, I'm hard as nails.

The cashier looked at me with such a horrified expression that it can't be expressed in words. Izzy just grinned at me. I think she's getting used to the fact that we aren't normal.

Warning: if you are my mother, you might like to look away now.

We've just come back from a week's holiday. We went to Cheshire on a canal boat with my parents and my brother. It's been planned since he was in Antarctica. I had been looking forward to it, albeit with a degree of trepidation.

It was a total nightmare. It was so bad that on several occasions I actually would have preferred to have been at work than on holiday. It was the worst holiday I have ever been on, by a considerable margin.

So, what could be so bad, you ask? Let me tell you in convenient bullet points:

• The weather. At first it was cloudy, spitting with rain. Then it started pouring with rain. On one day it absolutely pissed it down all day long. We still had to drive the boat, open the locks and entertain Isabel, despite being effectively caged in an iron box. On the days it didn't rain, we sailed through glorious countryside, provoking hayfever-tastic allergies. My brother and I got through more than 2 whole boxes of tissues. I sneezed and cried and snotted everywhere. It was vile.


• Having to do chores all the time. There were five adults on the boat. At any one time, you needed two people for locks, one person to drive and one person to look after Izzy. That leaves one other person to do cooking/washing up/having a shower/anything else. If you are NOT doing one of the allocated chores, you are essentially stiffing somebody else. We didn't get time to relax in the daytime AT ALL. My book remained resolutely unopened all holiday. I got up between 6.45am and 8am every single day. That is not a holiday lie-in.


• Isabel driving us mad. Izzy didn't want to wear her lifejacket and didn't much like getting off the boat at all, so we spent hours and hours doing colouring and listening to her ask, "What can I do"? We couldn't bring many toys as there isn't much space, so as the week went on, things became increasingly worse.


• Missing Wimbledon. As you probably know, Wimbledon is the highlight of the sporting calendar for me. Sadly, the TV on the boat wasn't up to much, so I missed all of it. I tried hanging out the window, waving the aerial, listening to static when Henman was playing, but sadly I could hardly see the ball. I love the first week, often even more than the second, so this was a great hardship for me.


• Looking shit all the time. The boat had a tiny shower, in which you got thrown against the sides if you dared take a shower while it was moving. The weather changed so frequently that you'd start off looking nice, then have to change into a long-sleeved top, then put on a cardigan, then a raincoat, and eventually end up totally mismatched and looking ridiculous. The hairdryer operated on a cigarette lighter and it would have been more effective to just get Mattgreen to blow on me, so it looked like a bird's nest all week. I didn't take any photographs.


• My dad. My dad is a project manager. I don't view holidays as 'projects', but he clearly does. We had to leave at certain times, like 8am, before we'd even finished breakfast. We got in trouble for going to the shop and forcing him to moor the boat. He dictated how many miles we travelled, how many locks we did and when we were allowed to stop for the night. I didn't take kindly to this. Eventually this came to a head when I asked him to pull the boat over so I could get on and fetch my raincoat as it had just started raining. He said no and laughed. So, after announcing my displeasure with a few choice obscenities, at high volume, I deliberately chucked my windlass (the tool you use for opening locks) in the canal. In retrospect, this probably didn't help the situation, but it made me feel better at the time.


• Messed up my diet. Mattgreen, Simon and I got drunk virtually every night. It was the only way to dull the pain. By the end of the week, my diet was in tatters. I missed five gym sessions while I was on the boat. We spent a fortune on beer. But it was the only way to survive.

I just cannot describe to you how utterly bleak it was. Standing at the back of the boat, driving in the pouring rain, freezing cold, with no clean suitable clothing left, knowing that I couldn't go on the internet or watch Wimbledon or chill out in front of Big Brother, having to endure my Dad and Isabel driving me slowly insane (in different ways), knowing that the next day would be more of the same, thinking about how I was wasting one fifth of my annual leave and how lovely it would be to be in my nice warm office, quietly typing invoices and listening to the tennis on the radio.

When the going gets tough, the tough start smoking, and I was glad I smoked this holiday. It was one of the few pleasures I had left. I know I'll have to give up again at some point, but my god I was grateful for it in my darkest hour. I was also glad of "Work it Fatty", the playlist I have on my iPod Shuffle, which got me through some hard times. We stopped for a night in Chester and I bought a gorgeous Coast top to cheer me up, which was nice. But other than that, there was not a lot of good times.

I'm writing this so that next time somebody suggests going on a canal holiday, I can look back and think, "No fucking way, never again, you're having a Turkish bath". I'm prone to having a somewhat selective memory and I needed to write this down so that I didn't accidentally forget just how horrendous it really was.

I know this must sound really ungrateful, especially as my parents paid for us to go on this holiday, and that's why I didn't want my Mum to read this. Hi Mum! Knew you wouldn't be able to resist! It's not that I'm ungrateful, it was my own fault. I should've realised that my hayfever is always awful in June, and that Izzy is never at her best cooped up, and that my Dad can't help being a project manager. I should have seen it coming. It's not my parents fault that we didn't enjoy ourselves. I really did try to pull it out but there were just too many extenuating circumstances.

We came home last night. We got in, got a takeaway, opened a bottle of champagne. Matt played on the internet, I watched the Big Brother eviction. This morning we all slept in, then I went to the gym. This afternoon I lazed in the sunshine, went to the local school fete and watched the entirety of the Andy Murray match which was totally awesome. We had a glass of Pimms in the garden after Isabel had gone to bed. It was so relaxing, it was ALMOST LIKE BEING ON HOLIDAY.

That lesson has so totally been learned.