How to feel like you're on holiday when you're not?

Yy to trying to hold out for Gloucester services . You basically feel like the Queen of the M5 if your family's bladders allow you to give Strensham a swerve.

For a less exotic holiday experience, park on the M5 and argue whether to go to Strensham Services, or if you can hold on until the nice ones at Gloucester.

Go shopping and barter really badly over some stuff you don't know why you want.

Eat sweaty cheese for your breakfast.

Dust off the Galliano/Kahlua/other random shite forrin alcohol and drink it with a paper parasol in the glass.

Go and look round a church making interested noises.

Take photos of some random people going about their daily lives. Like the trolley collector in Asda, for example.

Decide to completely change your life so you can live 'like this' all the time. Make a pie in the sky plan. Forget about it.

Feign an interest in art and sculpture.

Stand and watch a busker, and possibly dance a bit.

Use tiny toiletries and a shit hairdryer for a fortnight.

Have a breakfast of a mini croissant, baked beans, jam made of a fruit recognisable only to the Spanish, garlic mushrooms and lukewarm tea, all served on one plate.

Invite any passing Germans and Austrians to drape their towels over your settee, armchairs etc at 6.30am, before vanishing for the day.

Ask your DH or a close friend to hide your car in the car park of any major supermarket within a 5 mile radius, and only give you the keys when you've found it and agreed to pay €500 in Special Damage Collision Insurance for 3 days' use.

Get a free pass at a David Lloyd or some gym with an outdoor pool. Settle down on a lounger in the sunshine.....

Oh god Maidofstars that's bloody it!

If you have DC, make them sleep on fold out beds in your room for a week (as it's stupidly expensive in school holidays to get two adjoining hotel rooms). Then make sure the whole family goes to bed at the same time- play a game where you try to decide whether it's better to go to bed when they are ready and try to quietly read or wait until later and risk grumpy children for the whole of the next day.

Eat foods that you like, but in odd combinations and at odd times. Smear you and your DC in grease at regular intervals (to mimic the lovely feeling of waterproof sun cream). The sit outside your front door and get DH to ask everyone who passes by where they are from, what they do for a living and whether they have been here before.

Have your husband wander listlessly around seeking shade, while puffing, blowing and moaning that it's "too hot" every three minutes.

Spray said husband with creosote to replicate the annoying phenomenon of gaining a full, year-lasting tan in the sole five minutes he spends actually out in the sun.

Take your kids to a restaurant that serves nothing that they recognise. Listen to them complain for the next 2 hours that they can't eat the food ordered because it is the wrong colour/shape/texture or - heavens above - the chef has dared to leave the shell on a prawn and they had no idea prawns came in shells.

Go to your local chain restaurant for 7am breakfast and order beer/bucks fizz or even guinness (weirdo man last year at Gatwick).

Go to the post office and join the queue just to recreate the joys of airport queuing. Tut loudly at the person in front of you who has waited for 15 minutes in the queue and only when they've got to the front start fishing around for the paperwork they need.

Put your swimsuit on and then pour sand right down the front of it. Then get sun tan cream and try to rub it in thereby making sure you polish your skin nice and smooth. Walk sand into every part of your house.

Screech at the children for being so ungrateful for whinging and whining even thought you've brought them on a lovely holiday.

Have sex with your SO and then the two of you compare it to regular, home sex... just us?? Oh, well this is embarrassing! 😳😳😳

Secondhand hot tub!??? I think I did see a blowup floating bar on Amazon so maybe that would be an idea to go along with your hot tub?

Have a look at trip advisor and see what tourists like to do in your area and do some of those things.

Get up really early and queue in your bikinis with your towel etc at the back door for at least half an hour before breakfast to get the best spot in the garden. If you have dc, or dpartner and then get the best spot, sneak out during breakfast and move their towel.
Start drinking at 10am.

Put your TV in the back garden and watch Only Fools and Horses on a loop.

Insert European plug converters into every power point in your house. Buy and use 'humorous' luggage tags in your handbags and the children's backpacks. Find your nearest 1 star hygiene rating tattoo parlour and get a charming camel tattooed on your foot.

ask your neighbours to mind your pot plants, feed your cat and put out your bin.

Make sure they don't have a key to have a cuppa in your house!

Hide in the attic /basement eating tins of beans and sardines, olives, cucumber and feta chorizo and Manchego. Not to worry if you get a tummy bug.

Get a fake tan spray, or a sun lounger to move about on the floor where the sun's shining through the velux. Sprinkle sand as a seasoning in all your food and on the floor. Buy a fan and angle it to blow sand into your eyes, and bikini.

Go out at night to buy fags and grappa and hope your wallet isn't stolen. Wear high sandals and twist your ankle if you can.

Drink plonk from a box.

Lather yourself in coconut oil, and spray salty water on yourself too. Remain in your hat for 8hours a day until your hair is unrecognisable.

Read some horrific shite like 50 shades.
Read up on some foreign castle/ Templar knights /plague/ finch beak.
There will be a quiz later.

Just have sky news on the TV all week. Nothing else.

Put some sand in your handbag.

Buy lots of bottled water to either drink cold or boil in a tiny saucepan to make tea.

Feed the local stray cats.

Go out to the pub and ask if they can put British soaps on.

Get up at 2am.
Put on a full face of make up and shorts and a tshirt.
Pack the car so full you can't see any other vehicles apart from the one in front of you.
Drive around n freezing temperature until sunrise, come back home, down a pint of lager then arrange your dining room chairs in a row without any leg room.
Snort loud enough to wake the neighbours and dribble down your chin.
Go and find a coach that's not going anywhere for two hours and sit on it with a screaming baby and a toddler who shouts 'I've Poo in my pants'

Stay indoors for a week. Don't answer your phone, answer the door, but post pics of exotic places on your social media. Cover yourself in fake tan, then when Brown, go meet your mates down the pub and show off!

Learn some foreign phrases. Go up to total strangers and repeat them. Feel embarrassed when they reply in perfect English.

Gatecrash a wedding reception?

After a breakfast of things you would never usually eat spend the day getting slightly tipsy lying on a sun lounger. Then head up to your room for a shower before dinner. This will consist of random items on the same plate with token salad followed by a strange pudding which looked lovely but tastes of angel delight. Then head outside into the garden for the mini disco which will include Superman and the Birdie song but in forrin. Drink more. Sit through bingo which you cannot join in because they call the numbers in every language apart from English. Then relax with a cocktail whilst a 79 year old sings easy listening tunes, again in forrin. Make sure he is accompanied by a keyboard backing track from 1983. Head back to your room and fall asleep in a bed with one tiny pillow, a too small top sheet and scratchy blanket. Ensure you are either far too hot or cold in the middle of the night and wake up several times. Get up and repeat for 7 days.

Oops, no idea why that posted twice I have not been trying out holiday cocktails or maybe I have

Wearing skimpy swimwear hire a row boat at the local boating lake. Load boat up with drink then voila your very own booze cruise. Optional sunshade umbrella.
Bonus is that if you fall out of boat it's only knee deep.