There will be map-reading and motorway service stations and overpriced gift shop fudge and probably an argument over whether or not to go to a museum full of old pots.

I am VERY EXCITED.

Yet another item to add to my list of Moments That Made Me Realise I Am Now Very Old, I've discovered what people mean when they say they "need" a holiday.

When you're a kid, you never need holidays. They're surplus to requirements.

You never hear a seven-year-old say: "I'm telling you Brian, I've got to get away from it all. That key stage 2 maths project is driving me that barmy I don't think I'll last another week without putting my feet up."

When you're a kid, holidays are just a massive dollop of cream on top of the banana-split of fun that is your normal life.

It's more fun than is healthy, which is why they insist on being travel sick on the way.

You thought it was that jumbo Slush Puppie at the Welcome Break; I'm telling you now, it's the dangerous overdose of more joy than is good for them. Next year just do a library reading scheme and leave it at that.

For grown-ups though, I'm beginning to understand, holidays are like vitamin supplements — extortionately priced, artificially coloured and probably placebos, but terribly good at convincing you they'll make you a happier, healthier and infinitely more attractive human being.

I'm craving a holiday right now.

I think I want a holiday more than I want a tub of the magic creamy filling inside Kinder Happy Hippos, which has been my number one object of desire for many, many months now (a good thing, I feel, as the holiday's happening in two days' time and I might be waiting for the hippo-spread forever).

In fact, my recent health kick, getting up at eight and swimming 30 lengths of Highbury Pool every day, has actually just been a well-disguised symptom of my holiday obsession.

"Mmm," I thought, sitting on the bus home with wet hair and a shiny red face. "I smell wonderful. My toes are pruny and my skin is all tight. I have a strong desire to eat chips wearing a sarong. I feel great. This is what health must feel like."

Then I realised no, that's what holidays feel like. I've been paying £3.70 a day to smell of chlorine and pretend I'm at Center Parcs.

If I smell the part, I can close my eyes and convince myself I'm not on Holloway Road, about to go home and watch Loose Women with a lunch of last night's leftover chow mein; I'm actually about to cycle round a forest lake and maybe eat a picnic on a pedalo. I need a holiday, and possibly a therapist.

More than the chlorine cologne and added promise of an ear infection, though, I am excited about holiday food. As we all know, holidays are magic loopholes in the world of sensible shopping.

I've always believed that on booking a holiday, mums get granted access to a special, secret section of the supermarket invisible to all other customers. And OH, what wondrous bounty the special secret aisle holds.

Suddenly she'll buy things you only dream of the rest of the year, things with less nutritional value than the Cellophane they're packed in and the neon GM hue of a CBeebies character.

Then there are normal things, but in weird sizes, like tiny Pringles and industrial-sized ketchup and little individually-wrapped packets of biscuits, and the whole effect is a bit like being Alice in Tescoland.

The best, most supremely special example of all magical holiday food is, of course, the Kellogs Variety Pack. I haven't done very thorough research but I'm fairly sure that nobody in the history of mankind has ever eaten variety pack cereal on a normal day.

If they have, I imagine they must be some kind of fairytale royalty, or possibly a cereal heiress.

Never mind that they little teeny boxes never quite hold as much cereal as you actually want, or that in all their years of manufacture, they still haven't quite grasped that Shreddies taste like hamster bedding — forget your pain au chocolat, the variety pack is pure breakfast glamour, Brit style.

So for the next two days, while I'm packing my Savlon, cagoul and handbag-sized wet wipes, I'm going to capture some of the holiday magic early by decanting all my food into slightly smaller containers.

Whilst breathing in my lovely chloriney smell. And possibly having a day trip to my nearest old pot museum, during which I will mis-read my map, shout at myself, drink a jumbo Slush Puppie and be sick in a public toilet.

By the time I'm finished, I'll really, really need a holiday.

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