Nine People, One Villa, One Bathroom

It was not meant to require a system. By Tuesday it required a system. The rota is written in biro on the back of an itinerary nobody followed, it has been amended twice, and one member of the family has been described, out loud, at breakfast, as 'not respecting the schedule'.

There was a spreadsheet. Someone made a spreadsheet. Nobody opened the spreadsheet. Instead there were four months of messages, a poll that three people ignored, and an outcome in which two cousins arrived on the eleventh for a house booked from the twelfth.

Last year it took nineteen. The remark was delivered as concern, wrapped in a compliment, and followed immediately by an offer of food, which is the traditional three-part structure and which everybody present recognised and nobody named.