Airports are dreadful places that seem to exist only to give parents new reasons to shout at their children. Queues, shops, cafes, restaurants, crammed avenues and concourses: the modern airport is everywhere you’ve ever had to lose your shit at your children, all rolled into one. If the Mind-Flayer from Stranger Things was a building, it would definitely be an airport.

I’ve got to hand it to airport authorities: they’re ingenious, dastardly bastards. They know just how to work you, leading you through and along their labyrinths like coked-up rats in a maze. As soon as you’re through the security gates you’re funnelled into a giant shop (the first of many), where cries of ‘me want, me want, me want’ fill the air – and that’s just from my wife. She loves perfume. Not necessarily buying it. Just being around it. I had to spend a solid five minutes pivoting and dashing around snatching glass vials from the hands of my fleet-footed children while she sniffed seemingly every scent ever to have existed. Can there be any new smells left? Or any celebrities who haven’t endorsed a scent? We can’t be too far away from the arrival of ‘Diffidence’, by the late Bruce Forsyth.

I don’t know if I’ve overcome my fear of flying, or if my kids’ disobedience in the airport had left me no longer caring if I lived or died. Never-the-less, I was the best I’ve ever been on a flight without the aid of alcohol, pharmaceuticals or muttered promises to a God I don’t believe in.

I had to mask my true feelings about flying for the sake of the kids, to show them there was nothing to worry about, even though there clearly fucking is when you’re careening through the sky in a highly combustible tin dildo. If worst came to worst I’d like to think I would encourage us all to link hands and exchange looks of silent, sad acceptance, like the toys sliding down towards the furnace in Toy Story 3, but in reality I’d probably be screaming a bumper dictionary’s worth of swear words and hurling my own shit in the air like a chimp.

I’m not usually a fan of take-offs, but watching my eldest son lost in hysterical delight at the sensation in his stomach as we ascended (this was his first ever flight) distracted me from my unease. It was beautiful.

We flew with Ryanair, an airline whose passenger manifest seems to consist exclusively of hen-dos, stag-dos, old lads who still dress like sexual conquistadors in their mid-20s, and leathered-and-lacquered old ladies.

One of these such ladies – a boozy, crag-faced grandma – sat in the seats in-front of us. She fancied herself as something of a banter-merchant, a belief that only strengthened the more ferociously drunk she became. With each passing minute her cackles increased exponentially, in direct proportion to my rocketing despair. The more emboldened the drink made her, the steadier the barrage of banter that came my way. Had her banter been a flower, she would have picked it up, plucked its petals off and crushed its ovary to dust, before blowing the remnants in my face. I wasn’t exactly praying for an air disaster, but I would’ve been happy if a window had blown open just long enough to suck her out into oblivion.

My sister picked us up at Alicante, and we drove the half-an-hour or so to her villa. The first thing that struck me about my surroundings, gazing out the car window at the passing landscape, was that the concept of town-and-city planning didn’t seem to exist here. All there was for miles around was flat, scorched landscape, broken by the occasional incongruous crop of scraggy, withered green. Farms, houses, strip malls and holiday complexes were peppered around the panorama in a hopscotch way, with no discernible attempt to blend or group. I guess that’s what happens when corruption is the rule rather than the exception in the planning departments of local government.

“Senor, can I build a strip-club next to your funeral home?”

“Senor, you could put your strip-club IN the funeral home if the envelope’s big enough.”

As we got closer to my sister’s villa I saw more and more developments for ex-pats and tourists; little cubes that looked like they were designed by the Flintstones, but built by the Jetsons.

My sister had a lot of beds in her house, but small ones, and spread across two floors and three rooms. My wife and I had to sleep apart every night, keeping a kid each with us, Christopher, our youngest, taking the bed on the bottom floor, and Jack taking the bed on the first floor. We switched rooms and kids throughout the holiday, depending upon varying factors such as who Jack wanted to read him a story that night, and which of us could be arsed dealing with the more screamy one.

On the night I’m about to detail – which will henceforth be known as the night of blood-curdling terror – I was lying next to a sleeping Jack when a large, red moth descended from the shadows outside the lamp-light, and almost hit me straight in the face. It struck my shoulder and thudded down onto my rucksack that was lying on the floor at the bedside. I laughed, and watched its next moves with a smile. The moth sat there for a moment or two. Then it flapped and jumped towards the bed, before finally slithering behind it. It… what?

Wait a minute, I thought.

Moths…

…Moths don’t slither.

I wasn’t smiling any more.

A cold dread seized my skull, squeezing me alert. I dropped the book and hopped to my feet, staring from the empty space where the moth-thing had landed to the tiny gap it had squeezed through. If I’d been in a horror movie, I would’ve been the person shining a torch down a dark basement corridor saying, ‘Helloooo?’ in a croaky voice.

I carried Jack downstairs to the bed where his mother and brother lay sprawled, legs akimbo, limbs askew, and slotted him in next to them like a human Tetris piece. There was plenty of room for me – provided, that is, I contorted myself like a 12-year-old Russian gymnast. I didn’t care about comfort: better crumpled and cockroach-free than lying in a spacious bed with the haunted and twitchy demeanour of a combat soldier. My wife opened one eye; an eye that said the same as her mouth:

‘You’re not coming in here.’

‘There’s a cockroach up there,’ I said.

‘I heard,’ said the eye as it closed. ‘Pathetic.’

Pathetic? I was Indiana Jones, and that little guy was my pit of snakes; I was Superman, and he was my Kryptonite. That cockroach was the one chink in the armour of an otherwise impeccably brave man… except for when it comes to, em, wasps, heights, death, rejection, my mother, em… apart from that, though, the one chink in my armour.

Anyway, it was time to be brave. I needed my glasses, my book and my drink, which were all still encased within the roach room. I crept upstairs and stood in the door-frame, willing myself to walk inside. It took me about five minutes to work up the courage, and even then I ran in and out of that room with the speed of a little boy who’s just walked in on his parents shagging. In the morning the cockroach was gone, and so was my self-respect.

On our first full day we stopped off at Merca China for beach and pool supplies. Merca China is a chain of giant warehouses filled with baubles, bangles, beads and bad customer service; the very worst you’re ever likely to experience. The staff make you feel about as welcome as a rogue turd in a swimming pool that’s already bobbed half-way down an old woman’s throat.

The lady who served me didn’t look up at me once; just stood there staring angrily at the counter-top that rested between us, chewing gum like a speed-freak. She snatched the money from my hands and chucked the change at me with the rage-filled intensity of an aggrieved wife hurling her cheating husband’s clothes from a top-floor bedroom window. What crime had I committed beyond interrupting her afternoon mastication? I was aware of the unhelpful stereotype of Asian shop-keepers shouting ‘Hurry up and Buy’ at you, but this was the first time I’d experienced ‘Hurry up and die.’ The Merca China chain is closest in spirit and target market to our own B&M, except here both the B and the M stand for ‘Fuck You’.

We also experienced an authentic Spanish market, which was like a shanty town, but with second-hand sofas and cheap churros. I know markets like this usually attract an older demographic, but I’ve never visited one where you could sign up to start paying direct debits towards the cost of your funeral. No joke.

‘When you’re down the market, could you please bring back a dressing gown, a garden gnome, twenty packets of cigarette papers, some old models of vintage cars, a pound of oranges, and the peace of mind that can only come from a secure and flexible after-life plan?’

Whenever we went to a little cafe or tourist restaurant I always popped in to the ex-pat’s shops nearby. The range of second-hand paperbacks that were on sale helped to paint a picture of the ex-pat’s sociological make-up: Catherine Cooksons and Andy McNabs, sweeping romances and tales of war, spies, and intrigue. Clearly these were older people – retirees and escapees from Blighty – with an old-fashioned, romantic and defiantly binary view of the world; the sort of folks who would’ve voted Brexit, and probably still did, despite living in fucking Europe.

As the holiday was in part a honeymoon – by virtue of its proximity to our wedding – my sister recommended an eatery that would be just the ticket: a ‘traditional’ Spanish restaurant tucked away in an obscure suburban square, thoroughly off the beaten track, complete with mandatory tapas courses, and deliciously inexpensive carafes of wine (inexpensive is my favourite flavour). She said she’d drop us off, take the kids back to the house, feed and entertain them, then come back for us in a few hours’ time. At this point my gratitude started tussling with my paranoia, imagining Highway Robbers with little tick-lists of foreign blonde children.

We very rarely take time apart from our kids. We’re a family, for better or worse, and we do everything together, particularly mass mental breakdowns, at which we excel. This, however, was our honeymoon, so we felt entitled to a few hours’ respite from being maw and paw. Each of us separately has spent time apart from the kids, but it’s a strange feeling to be together, just the two of us, without them: a heady mix of guilt and joy, a cocktail we found was best washed down with copious amounts of wine. Or cocktails. I loved every minute of our freedom, but occasionally got a passing feeling like I’d just burned down an orphanage.

It helped that the restaurant our sister had recommended for us was like something out of a European art-house movie from a different era. The little trattoria has been owned by the same family for eons, and it shows in the personalised clutter and paraphernalia hanging from the walls and around the bar. People have been coming here for years, from all around the world, again and again, and they stay in touch. Up on the wall behind the bar were postcards from as far flung places as Britain, Australia, Scandinavia, and Texas.

I came armed with enough basic Spanish to ask for the menu, the bill, and to ask where the toilet was. I used my phone to Google any other phrases I needed. I always think it shows respect and value to use the native lingo, instead of just wandering in and shouting everything slowly in English like you’re talking to a dog (“I SAID DO. YOU. HAVE. THE. CHIPS. WITH. CHEESE, PEDRO? God, why don’t these people speak the Queen’s English?). Plus, it’s always good to learn new things. The bistro had its own resident cat. Good old Google told me how to ask the waitress its name. I was expecting it to be Ramone or something.

But it was called Fluffy.

That’s the memory of the holiday that will always stick with me: tipsy in that little trattoria, stuck in time, the minutes feeling like long, happy hours, the sun beating down outside; and in the town square just beyond the door, the spiral art installation, held in place by braces attached to trees, that we walked up – giggly and giddily – to survey the unbroken, dusty landscape beyond the town.

We stood there together in silence for a few moments, side-by-side, looking out at a different dusty landscape: that of our future.

All holidays and honeymoons have to end. As do all things, good and bad.

I’ll drink a cheap carafe of wine to that.

Adios, amigos.

Read a separate article from the same holiday about our trip to the mountains, featuring excitement, despair and a stolen car HERE