We don't all love to be beside the seaside

This year, I abandoned any idea of going abroad. I have just had a baby and the thought of manoeuvring four children plus all their clothes and cots and pushchairs round an airport, let alone on an aeroplane, was enough to stop me dead. Instead, last week I took them down to Cornwall with a friend and her two children.

We set off in the pouring rain.

When we got to Cornwall six hours later, the sun was shining and everything seemed worth it..

But then, of course, it all went wrong.

The sea was freezing, which meant that my friend and I spent endless hours marching up and down the beach shouting encouragement while the children shivered in the water and the baby hid in my raincoat.

Then it became obvious that there was some idea that all day, every day, we should be Doing Something. "Let's go surfing and sailing and water-skiing and round it off with a trip to the Eden Project and a night watching Lily Allen!" said my friend. "With the baby?" I said faintly. Thank God I had the baby.

She became my get-out clause for everything.

Eventually we gave up and drove back through tumultuous rain storms. By the time we got home, I was exhausted.

And now I am supposed to fill the coming weeks finding more things for the children to do.

Every toy shop is full of ideas from stained-glass painting kits to growing sea monkeys or digging up fake dinosaur bones in the garden. The local papers have offers for Legoland/Chessington/

Alton Towers. I know people who are sending their children on sailing courses, weeks at Camp Beaumont and on a variety of Super Camps, at great expense.

But when I was a child, I didn't do anything during the holidays. I sat in the garden and made daisy chains. Why can't the children just do that? This will not wash, of course.

Still, my advice is to stay at home.

London has a lot more to offer than washed out days at the beach spending money on over-priced ice creams. Next year, we'll camp out at the Natural History Museum and then take in an IMax movie and round it off with a bit of Madame Tussauds. Now that's what I call a holiday..