Planet Mad

The good thing about holidays is that you get to drink until late in the evening, or even early in the morning if you are lucky. You can then sleep until about 1.30pm, at which point you remain in bed and start reading exciting books. Although you may be disturbed by someone at the door at around 3.30pm, it won't matter (much) that you're still in your dressing gown with morning hair and sleepy eyes. It's fab that you can have breakfast at 4pm, and then mooch about with very little purpose, until suddenly - PING - it's 12.20am, you go sleepy and it's time for bed again.

The bad thing about all this debauchery is the way that your body clock adapts too quickly, and you know that - after just 2 days' worth of lie-ins - it's going to be a nasty shock when the alarm goes off tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning I go shopping with Ian to buy exciting food for our dinner party. He will fondle the produce, dreaming of exotic mash and spicy sausages. I, however, will be meandering the aisles, squinting bleary-eyed at the labels and pretending to be a bad-tempered old biddy. Hopefully this means that I can ram the trolley into people's ankles and moan about the price of fish.