`Another one for the catalogue, Mum." John, nine years old and very pleased, pointed to the latest disaster. The sun caught the million tiny shards on the tiles of our holiday apartment, all that was left of the glass his younger brother Andrew had been carrying. The culprit looked at his empty hand and then at us. Nobody was sure who might start crying first.
John was keeping a mental Log of Holiday Disasters. He did a quick recap in case we'd forgotten. "Number 1, no hired car. Number 2, Andrew diarrhoea. Number 3, me sick. Number 4, pharmacy closed. Number 5, mosquitoes. Number 6, no adaptor. Number 7, Daddy's monkfish overcooked. Number 8, glass broken by Andrew."
We hadn't done a package holiday before. Previously, family holidays had been VSFR (Visiting Still Friendly Relatives) or VRSF (Visiting Relatively Stoical Friends). Or we'd embarked on hastily decided, unplanned odysseys of our own, involving endless driving on motorways in hot sun followed by endless trudging on beaches in driving rain.
This time, a bit desperate, we thought we'd see how far sunshine package holidays had come in the 90s. We'd leafed through the brochures trying to decide between the plain oblong swimming pools and the ones with the curves. In the end, the kids chose the one with the biggest water slide and started packing - model cars, favourite kites, souvenirs from other holidays and Andrew's butterfly collection.
The early omens weren't good. In the airport check-in queue we met friends from my earlier life - nice people we'd never have thought of going on holiday with and vice versa who were staying, we discovered with mutual wariness, in the same development. We waved and smiled, smiled and waved our way from airport terminal to plane to airport terminal. Our jaws stiffened, our teeth clenched.
On the coach, to which we'd ignominiously returned when our hired car proved to be a no-show, these friends were able to tell me about the unalloyed happiness of my ex-fiance, the millionaire. His wedding in Lapland had been unbelievable, they said. He was now travelling the world with his young and exotically beautiful wife, they said. Not what you want to hear on your way to a cheap, too-small apartment in a sector of the Med so uncool it hadn't even come back into fashion like Sitges.
At the pool there were Germans. Not just Germans, but Germans with tattoos. Super-Germans practising arrogance for the European Cup Final. And small super-Germans, mostly three-year-olds, swimming in shoals, visible only as slivers of golden brown as they darted beneath the blue waters of the pool. "Rotten little gloriers" snarled John. "Probably have swimming pools right in their own houses in Germany," huffed Andrew. It was one of the few points on which they agreed throughout the holiday.
Oblivious to hunger, untouched by sunburn, the golden Teutonic tots rarely emerged from the pool until the parents raised an eyebrow to indicate that it was time to go and win the under-10s' tennis tournament.
With characteristic disdain, my kids weren't terribly interested in the pool until after 6 p.m., when everybody else had left. They could then assure themselves of my unhindered view of their white-bodied belly-flops, triple axels and noisy water-karate battles. "Look, Mum . . . look at me. Mum . . . MUM!"
Friends had sworn that, on holidays such as this, the children disappeared early in the day and didn't return until nightfall. They would play football, tennis, golf, softball, pelota and bolas-flinging. They would run with the bulls, pick up a smattering of Spanish, French and German and come home with invitations to spend the whole of next summer cycling in the Dordogne.
Mine, however, refused to play with other children, even the very friendly ones next door. "We can't understand them," Andrew maintained stoutly. "They don't speak English." Soon afterwards I realised that these foreign-tongued children were from Cork.
Unimpressed by the beauty of the island, our kids wanted to spend all day inside the apartment, playing cards, fighting and complaining of boredom. John's catalogue expanded daily.
"Number 8, massive coke spill by Andrew over beach towels. Number 9, can't find launderette. Mum says how can place like this be spoiled by launderette. 10, hamburgers horrible. 11, rain. 12, water slide closed (at 50p a go, Daddy pleased). 13, no chocolate sauce. 14, nasty local guy hogs pinball machine all night in bar. 15, mean Mum won't let Andrew dig up hotel cactus for his collection. 16, swimming trunks accidentally flushed down loo by John. Mean Mum cross."
By now we're all contributing to the catalogue. 17, Daddy cross about full daily charge for getting onto beach at 5 p.m. - only 50 pesetas each but it's the principle of the thing. 18, Mum runs out of suncream at midday; pharmacy closed; supermarket closed; small shop closed. 19, Daddy loses at golf with ex-fiance's friend in 90 degrees of heat and rage.
"You must enjoy this holiday," I explained to the kids. "We're only here because of you. If it weren't for you, Daddy and I would be wandering around a cool, air-conditioned museum in Florence." (I don't mind laying statements like this on my kids, because guilt is an emotion with which, despite my example, they remain entirely unacquainted. The guilt gene has skipped this generation.) "Museums aren't cool, Mum, they're boring," Andrew reasoned. "You should be grateful to us - and you have to buy me a cactus."
By now, British-explorer-type Daddy was finding it too much coping with the screaming pool, the bronze Germans, the bickering kids and sitting still in the hot sun, all at the same time. So every day, we set off to find the archetypal tiny uninhabited cove with deep turquoise waters, unsullied sand and rocks for the boys to climb. Maps of the island suggested a network of minor roads. But these regularly turned out to be newly-privatised cart tracks with barred gates. Red dots which I took to be villages were often large private villas.
However, the spirit of the late British Empire prevailed and we began to trespass with abandon. By the second week we had explored every rutted track on the island. Any beach that was reached by less than a half-hour trek over moon-rocks and lava was home to the migrant populations of Dortmund and Huddersfield.
But there were small victories. Semi-deserted crescents of blue and gold, surrounded by cliffs with primeval caves. Lagunas accessible only by pedal boat. Unpromising promontories concealing empty strips of sand. On one of these we encountered naked people covered entirely in red mud. This, for the kids at least, was the highlight of the holiday.
And we were learning to relax. The club bar we had retreated from in horror on the first night was now a haven where the kids played healthy games which improved their hand-eye co-ordination, like ping-pong, snooker, darts and, my own forte, bar football.
They wore nothing but baggy swimming shorts and I stopped trying to find the launderette. Two days of rain had banished the mosquitoes and John, the gourmet, had settled down to one meal a day - ice-cream and chips. Andrew developed an unlikely taste for hake, available everywhere, freshly grilled and less expensive than pizza.
On the second last evening, enjoying the sunset over our own tiny cove, watching the boys like silhouetted sea sprites dancing amid the sparkling waves, I thought, yes, this could well be the life.
From behind the jagged cliff protecting our cove, the prow of a surreally magnificent yacht came gliding in full pride. It had three tall graceful masts and its hull was long and low, midnight blue with a narrow red stripe just above the waterline. It moved into its painting-by-numbers position in the cove and dropped anchor.
Later, as darkness fell, the Ship of Dreams was joined by a speedboat from Star Wars, cutting silently across the moonsilver sea. My husband watched through his binoculars as the boat discharged its beautiful and elegant cargo, who were handed aboard the yacht by the white-uniformed crew.
"Christy Turlington?" I inquired. "Richard Branson? Prince Felipe de Bourbon and the Infanta?"
"Probably your damned ex-fiance" he muttered.