How not to have a holiday

1.  Make sure that you haven't had a decent (as in more than  two nights) holiday ANYWHERE for over two years.
2.  Decide that you'll go to Coffs Harbour, for a camping holiday, for a week leaving the day after Boxing Day.
3.  Leave Sydney at about 10.30am and arrive in Forster nine and a half hours later!!! after being stuck in 3 traffic jams, one of them more than 20km long, with two kids under 9 in the car.
3.5  Stop on the side of the F3 so the kids can go bush.  Youngest child doesn't understand instructions.  Use your imagination for the rest of *that* story.
4.  Discover about 4pm that there is no way you are going to get to Coffs Harbour at anything approaching a sensible time.
5.  Ring assorted relatives to locate a motel room, hotel room, car parking space, tree branch so you can spend the night somewhere other than in the car
6.  Have the relatives ring back to say that there are precisely 0 rooms, car parking spaces or tree branches available.
7.  Remember that BIL and SIL are staying in their parents' flat in Forster.  Ring them at 6 from Buladelah. Arrange to sleep on their floor for the night.  Actually arrive in Forster at 8.05pm.  Another traffic jam.
8.  Ferret around in trailer trying to find blow up beds for the floor of the flat.  Try to find other things.  Can't.  Give up.
9.  Sleep in your clothes sans toothbrush, deodorant or anything resembling hygiene products.
10.  Get up at dawn and return to the car.
11.  Drive for 30 minutes.
11.5  Have a tyre blow on the trailer and stop by the side of the road to change tyres.
12. Drive some more
13.  Yet more driving.
14.  Arrive in Coffs Harbour at about 2.30.
15.  In the middle of a rainstorm.
16.  Unpack tent.  Unpack stuff.  Try to avoid raindrops.  Fail.
17.  Discover your tent site is next to four twentysomethings who want to drink beer all night, let you listen to their music...I think it was music? and rev up their car to go for another beer run at all hours.
17.5  Count how many times the f word can be incorporated into a sentence under the influence of many beers (not us, them)
18.  Be grateful that you have noisy kids who are awake at the crack of dawn and have a trampoline right outside the tent
19.  Spend three nights on an airbed having forgotten that both you and DH have bad backs, and in your case bad hips as well.
20.  Discover that Coffs treats you to a terrific thunderstorm most afternoons about 3pm.
21.  Discover that the tent leaks.  Copiously.
22.  Have your DH contract a seriously nasty cold on day two of your holiday.
23.  Decide that three nights is the limit of this particular endurance test, pack up and drive home in less time than it took you to travel to Forster on Day One.
24.  Watch the Sydney fireworks.
25.  Go to bed and find out that you can't sleep.
26.  Hop online and shamlessly attempt to cadge sympathy 

I am in serious need of a holiday.