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

Go to a local supermarket and fashion an evening meal out of a large pack of crisps, a dodgy pizza and a tin of heinz beans. Pay 20 euros for the privilege.

How about:

• Each time you go out, return to the house to check you've unplugged everything, closed the windows and turned the gas off.

• Ask your neighbours if they can put your bins out for you.

• Drive somewhere and get stuck in traffic for hours. Vow never to drive on holiday in the UK in August again.

• each time you come home, check house for standards of cleanliness. Act disgusted and vow never to go on a UK cottage holiday again.

Some of these are hilarious, I almost feel I'm on holiday reading this thread!

Just spend the week wearing two pairs of knickers, wash them in the bathroom sink each night, preferably with a tiny bar of over perfumed soap then drape to dry on the back of a white plastic patio chair in the garden.
Is possibly my favourite.

What sort of holiday are you wanting to pretend you're on OP? 18-30 style holiday in Corfu or a family holiday in Devon?

Ask a friend to come and make your bed every day - they must do it so tightly that you can't actually get into bed without ripping everything off the mattress.

If they really want to, let them fold a towel into a novelty shape and put it as far away from the shower as possible. Hide all other towels.

Hang a sign outside your bedroom door saying do not disturb or please make my room up.

Have your breakfast wearing your swminwear and shorts and t shirt over the top.

Put boiled eggs and rolls in your bag for lunch.

Just seethe and shout at your kids and cry internally as you are too hot. Rage at the poor wifi

Recreate the all inclusive meal experience by combining pizza, gravy and beetroot all on one plate (ds, I'm looking at you )

Go to a charity shop and buy a shitload of airport books in big format. Stuff at least six into your suitcase. Don't read them.

Recreate jetlag by going to bed at 7 and setting your alarm for 3 am. Get up and stumble round in a disoriented fug for a couple of hours, then be first in the queue when your nearest tourist attraction opens for the day. Fall asleep face down in your pudding at dinner.

Crank the heating up to 30°C before you go to bed.

Book a massage/facial/manicure

Enjoy!

OP,

Amuse yourself by replicating the full "Z-Lister sleb abroad" tabloid experience:

Ask/ bribe friends to pap stalk you.
(Staged-to-the-finest-detail 'spontaneous' shots only).

(NB You must express weary resignation throughout: bloody press have had nerve to follow your Agent's tip-off invade your privacy. Again).

Classic Sleb On Hol pics to include:

1. 5 changes of swimwear:

1. (a) Flatteringly-angled, beach yoga session:

or

(b) UNflatteringly-angled, sunbed shot:
(Must be mid-mouthful of delicious, calorific snack. Must be clutching excess stomach or thigh. Must look despondent with self-disgust).
[ In Daily Fail world, this is deemed v. v. bad (sad face), though v. v. good for planned Xmas weight-loss DVD sales...reward yourself with Bacardi from the minibar].

1. Glimpses into your glamorous, cosmopolitan holiday lifestyle:

I needed this thread tonight

Variety packs for breakfast - starting off with all the nice ones and then argue with the rest of the family about the cornflakes that are left - then give in and but another pack!

Make dinner without a chopping board or a sharp knife on two rings that will only turn to 'boil to death' or wouldn't melt butter.

Drink coffee out of tiny 1970's mugs.

Feed kids cereal in bowls which fit 3 x rice crispies and a show of milk.

Use the same tea towel for a week

Make a salt srub & get it in your bits, under nails and in your sandwiches and one lone grain in your eye.

Drink warm cans of estrella with wasps in.

Just imagine what you would do if you had hired your home as a holiday home. Okay what you would do after you had complained about the house being let to you dirty.

You would not bother with cleaning. You would visit local attractions, eat out and generally try and have a lovely time.

Be on holiday even though you're not. Adopt that holiday frame of mind.

Eat ice cream in the street. Build a sand pit in the garden. Let your worries go.

Most holiday experiences can be recreated at home.... don't worry what people think, just enjoy yourself in the wY you would ifno one was watching.

Go to your local pool at peak time, take your lilo. Float in middle as screeching kids jump in all around you.

Listen to the same song for a fortnight. Eg Agadoo or The Birdie Song. Learn all the moves and use them impress your friends when back off holiday.

Talk very LOUDLY and very SLOWLY in english/franglaise

Meticulously wash and iron all your linen clothes. Pack them with every summery thing you own into a case. Wrestle it closed. Wear 4 items from it on rotation for the next week.

Buy a shitload more clothes from a market to complement your new holiday look - patterned drawstring cuffed trousers may suddenly appeal. Never wear them. Open case, wash and iron everything again, including the unworn linens, pack away for next year.

Have a great manicure. Apply insect repellent containing veet in a room with a tiled floor. Skate around at high speed. Marvel as your nail polish smears and dissolves.

Put BBC world service on, or at least download their clubby background music.

Watch Benidorm on netflix to get some good ideas!