Since becoming a mum, is your idea of a break a solo trip to the loo and enough time to cut your toenails? Do you feel positively Mediterranean slinging a bit of feta in your shopping trolley, and having a siesta (or rather passing out from exhaustion), on the couch while the kids nap? It could be you are suffering from a well-known condition called MINOAH – Mum In Need Of A Holiday. Don’t worry, it’s not serious (in fact it’s entirely made up for the purposes of a blog post), but urgent treatment is required – sun, sea and a shitload of wine. In case you are still unsure you have it, here are eight more symptoms of MINOAH…

1. You booked your last holiday through Ceefax – after ‘setting the video’ for Dynasty
If the last time you went anywhere that involved a passport was when your hair was backcombed and you knew who was at number one of the charts/hit parade, then, let’s be honest, it’s time for a holiday. No more but-it’s-just-so-hard-when-you-have-kids excuses – you really don’t want to be that mum who thinks a can of Lilt in the park is exotic. But before you leg it to Thomas Cook, you should know a few things first: No one is pushing the pineapple any more, they don’t do jazzercise in the pool and Stan Boardman-style jokes about the Germans are now widely disliked – and not just for being shit.

2. You find yourself slumped at the end of the day, mouth open, in front of Nickelodeon for over half an hour before changing the channel
True, this is pretty standard stuff for most knackered mums and is up there with boiling a kettle for no reason at all and mindlessly putting a nappy on a potty-trained child. However, you know it’s time to dig out the luggage and lilo when you find yourself watching, without moving, whole episodes of Peppa Pig and nudging your other half next to you, also slumped open-mouthed, wondering aloud: “Do you think Mummy and Daddy Pig shag much?”

3. That bottle of Prosecco is looking good by 10am
To be fair, after a night of broken, brutalising sleep, squirting syringes of Calpol down reluctant gullets, humming Down in the Jungle while lying on the floor next to a restless cot and then still rising before proper telly transmission; you’ve pretty much completed a full working day by 10am. It’s when wine o’clock starts creeping forward each day, to the point you’re slurring as you dish up the kids’ Turkey Drummers, that it might be time to abandon the booze and book yourself a break. Go somewhere soothing, sunny and where it’s quite acceptable to drink alcohol in the morning.

4. You’re in danger of getting rickets, given the most exposure you get to the sun is walking to Tesco – from its adjacent car park
There’s no denying, slinging kids into a car is generally far more appealing than the prospect of wobbling down the road with a cumbersome buggy and sighing at a toddler: “Come on! Leave that stone where it is! No, I don’t want to see the cat poo that looks like an elephant.” Perhaps though, it’s time to park the car (yes that’s very cleverly both literal and metaphoric), and get a decent dose of vitamin D that’s not in tablet form. Treat yourself to a cheeky jaunt where you can chide: “Come on! Leave that stone where it is! No, I don’t want to see the cat poo that looks like an elephant”, in a slightly nicer, new environment.

5. You find yourself envying the paperboy for a job that involves a degree of travel
Look at him – arms swinging either side of his fluorescent, cross-body messenger bag, resentfully stuffing the free rag into letterboxes before swaggering back down the path like a gorilla. He’s free to roam around the neighbourhood, do a wheelie and at the drop of a Nike cap, eat a bag of Monster Munch with both hands. He doesn’t know he was born that pubescent, paperboy prick… Such inner monologue running through your head while observing a person more liberated than yourself – i.e. someone who isn’t stuck indoors with babies and barf clamped to their hair – needs addressing. It’s time to stop staring at the paperboy from behind the nets (before someone calls the police), and take a trip. And you know, maybe a little therapy wouldn’t go amiss either…

6. You habitually forget what you’ve walked into a room for
You know you’ve become your dad when you shuffle upstairs, scan the room you’ve just walked into and mutter to yourself: “Now, what did I come up here for?” Then, as you slowly recall it was your glasses that prompted your pensioner plod-like ascension, you ramble room to room getting more vexed, with both the missing spectacles and huge, high-pitched row breaking out downstairs. Finally, just as you’re about to lumber downstairs with empty threats of no ice cream, you tentatively pat your scalp and feeling like a massive twat, discover they’ve been sitting on top of your head the entire time. Get thee on thy jollies, Grandma!

7. You are fixated, a little more than is healthy, with the man across the road’s recycling bin
It’s a sure-fire sign your world has become too small when you find yourself trailing your indifferent other half around the house, relaying the man across the road’s recycling bin sins, including his unflattened juice cartons and offending mixed matter in his green box. Similarly, your wearied spouse most likely couldn’t give a tiny gnat’s crap less that the woman with three cars parked in your spot again; the despondent teenager on the checkout at Tesco looked at your bawling baby funny; and that the grumpy postman knocked really loudly, probably, most definitely, on purpose at naptime. Get a grip! Get away!

8. You haven’t got the energy to shout
Ordinarily, especially in front of the overbearing baby brigade who scold their children via the medium of dance, you might chastise your misbehaving child through a self-conscious, gritted smile desperately supressing the urge to shout (before doing exactly that). So when you casually observe, without bat of eyelid let alone raise of voice, scenes of sibling violence, food-flinging and, *shudder*, your partner filling the wrong colour of beaker – something is seriously up. It’s clear you’re in need of sandy, soggy nappies, over-priced plastic beach toys and many, many sticky ice cream kisses. The stuff of lovely, long-lasting, and yes, OK, rose-tinted memories. Altogether now: “Are we there yet? My need a wee-wee!”

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WHOOP! WHOOP!

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