When Mr AMR and I first had Angelica, we vowed never to take a holiday abroad for at least five years. Just getting to Sainsbury’s was enough of a faff – getting her into the car seat, getting her out again for a feed and a change, stopping for another feed halfway down the dual carriageway, getting her into the buggy – we couldn’t begin to imagine what going abroad would be like.
Then we had Ted, a year and a half later, and the faff didn’t just double – it tripled. Two buggies, or one gargantuan megatron buggy, no other space in the boot for the shopping, relay nappy-changing trips to the toilets, vom-poo-vom-wee-wee incidents, lost shoes, hangry rants at the tills. We very firmly decided that holidays, for the foreseeable future, would not be for us. But fast-forward a year, through what felt like the world’s longest winter (I thought I’d somehow become trapped in an episode of Game of Thrones) and we were desperate to see some sun. I think I even said to Mr AMR that I would endure anything – anything! – for just a few hours lying on a lounger somewhere relatively hot.

Which was how we found ourselves – against all of our own advice – boarding a plane to Crete with a toddler and a baby and not nearly enough snacks or amusing things to see us through a four hour flight. We had been warned, by many, that going on holiday with small children was a sort of “same sh*t different scenery” af...