I want to go on holiday.

I know it’s only a few months really since we went off to Spain for ten whole days, but I really would quite like another holiday now please.

I suppose it must be the time of year, and the fact that my nose seems to be maintaining a temperature roughly ten degrees cooler than the rest of my body, that’s making me yearn for sunnier climes. I’m fed up of feeling chilly and shivering in bed. I want to be outside, and feel the sun burning my shoulders.

I’ve had a real hankering lately to go and stay in a yurt somewhere. We’ve never really been a package holidays kind of family, and for a few years running we spent a week every summer in the UK in a yurt. Like this one. And yes I do realise it’s just a cheaty, middle-class way of going camping but I’m sorry, I just don’t want to put up a tent. We do camp at festivals, but not even being able to stand upright while you put yesterday’s damp clothes back on is not my idea of an idyllic break.

Lately though too I’ve started imagining holidays further afield, which isn’t like me. We didn’t go abroad as children, so I’ve never caught the travelling bug, but in the last year or so I’ve spread my wings a little, and am feeling a bit braver. Who knows, one day I may even make it out of Western Europe.

For now though I’d be quite happy perched outside on the steps of a yurt, surrounded by trees, perhaps with a few chickens pecking at the ground around me.* In my fantasy holiday Belle has of course made friends with some good-mannered yet confident children in the tipi next door, and they are off in the woods, doing something wholesome like making bark rubbings or throwing sticks at birds’ nests. I’m cradling a large mug of tea and nibbling on some sort of organic, farmhouse cookie.

For now though summer seems a long way away. Looks like I’ll have to make do with a blanket on my knees and an Aldi rich tea biscuit.

*At a reasonable distance obviously. I find close up birds a bit frightening.