I have already had enough of the holidays.

Five people trapped in one (relatively small) house, miserably watching the rain cascading down the windows and getting in between each other and the crunchy rolls in the breadbin DOES NOT WORK.

It has got to the point where I am taking large gulps of air and counting to ten very slowly with my eyes closed and my fists clenched when one of them does as much as breathe too loud or stand too close. The ten minute struggle my sister and father had to insert a new film into her new-ish camera was particularly gruelling. Whilst they made impossibly loud and infuriating clacking noises with the camera and snapped far too often 'it does not work, let ME do it!', Mami and I stood in the kitchen baring our teeth.

Don't let's get started on the stealing of clothes or iPod headphones, all the more frequent grievances since my siblings have finished school.

I escaped to my second home (a.k.a. Judith's house), where I was relatively safe and happy learning how to play monopoly with her younger brother and sister, when in came her father, who grabbed my copy of Harry Potter The Very Last. I don't dare to leave it in the house for fear of stealage or plot-spoilage.

What's this?? he cackled joyfully, Can it be...? He picked it up and flipped to the last page. From my sitting on the floor position, I crawled over speedily (almost as if made to be like that, moving on all fours) with my little silver top hat clenched in one hand, colliding with a wet dog on the way, and grabbed his wrists. Judith's father's, and not the dog's.

NO. I told him very firmly. He scanned the page. No!! I shouted at him as his lips began forming a word from the page. I sort of knelt there before him in a pleading, frantic way, and eventually he took pity on me.

How old are you? he asked, and laughed for a long time. And anyway, I was only trying to read you the last sentence. He looked all innocent-like. If that had been my father, I would have thrown something at him.

See? I am safe nowhere.