Is it just ME?

Or are summer holidays never as good as you think?

AT about this time of year, possibly while pulling on a second pair of socks before an evening barbecue or zipping up my Mackintosh because some bright spark has suggested a picnic, I think: ‘Why, why, why didn’t I book a proper holiday?’ Tuscany, Provence, the Costa del Sol — even a glimmer would do.

I could be there on a sun lounger, warm, bronzed, drowsy. When I think about it, though, it is pure pina colada fantasy. A sun holiday is nothing like this.

It is hot. It is sticky. It is sweaty. I have spent 20 minutes twisting and bending to reach that tricky bit between my shoulders and now I am slick with Factor 30, lying like a spatchcocked chicken.

And I am bored. I try a book. The sun is in my eyes. My sunglasses slip down my nose. My straw hat itches. I roll on to my front. Must have an even tan. Now, face down, I can’t even read. Boredom. Torpor. The beginning of a headache.

What about the church — the little, cool, shady Romanesque church? We could go there. But it is

chiuso, fermé, closed today. A swim? No, not worth it. I would have to start the sun cream all over again, twisting and bending and all the rest.

I have a headache. A raging headache. I’ve missed a bit of my shoulders, too. A burn: crayfish pink, lobster pink, angry pink.

Lunch, then: paracetamol, bed and — ow, ow, ow — calamine lotion. The drooping, melting ice cream feeling of having been in the sun too long. The sheets smelling of Ambre blasted Solaire.

And after a week of this rigmarole: a tan with all the colour of a McVitie’s Rich Tea biscuit. The French girl on the next-door lounger, meanwhile, is as golden as the torched top of a creme brulee.

All of which is why I am off to Margate in September, to shelter behind a windbreak in a sou’wester and drink hot tea from a Styrofoam mug. I am looking forward to it vastly.

It’s hot. It’s sticky. I am lying like a spatchcock chicken on my sun lounger – bored!