It happens sometimes when you meet another parent in the school playground who has just come back from the family holiday - especially if 'it was great, but we could have done without... the long walk to the beach... the sponge mattress... the sunburn... the night our youngest was sick... the local kids on mopeds/ gangs of Brits/ all-night disco down the road keeping us up all night... the journey to and from the airport... the weather... the food... the service.'
That's when I think of Center Parcs - none of the above need apply in the Center Parcs bubble. The weather doesn't really matter. There are no bored teenagers, or gangs of youths claiming the streets in the evening. No drunkards, no car stereos (no cars, come to that), no bad language, no threat of anything nasty around the corner. The noise level is low - at least outside the swimming pool (It's weird. Do they put something in the water?)
Most families are there for a long weekend or a few days in midweek - not long enough for children to get bored. Their parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters and often aunts and uncles are likely to be with them most, if not all, of the time.
We've been to Center Parcs twice now. Once to Oasis Whinfell Forest, on the edge of the Lake District National Park, for a long weekend at Easter, and once to Longleat in Wiltshire, for a week in the summer.
Over the course of both trips we heard the f-word once, saw kids smoking once, and encountered hundreds of 13-19 year-olds who clearly and demonstratively felt that Center Parcs, despite the presence of all those mums, dads, grandparents and baby brothers, was 'cool'.
It perhaps sounds a bit 'Stepford Wives, Husbands and Children'. But that's unfair. It's twee, manufactured, but safe, clean, polite, unpolluted, tranquil and above all very enjoyable. Most of us can handle a bit of tranquil, an adjective not commonly associated with family holidays. Victor, aged five, and Bonnie, aged nine, loved it and want to go back as soon as possible. We have never met any parents, including ourselves, who did not want to return.
There are several differences between Longleat and Oasis, not least of which is the nightlife. At Oasis, there was a show in the evening - plenty of singing, lots of flashing lights and changes of costume, nothing too taxing; the sort of family entertainment likely to be on television at seven o'clock on a Saturday night.
We went two nights running. You could get a table, enjoy a drink, and it didn't finish too late. We also found ourselves sitting next to the grandparents of Bonnie's new friend and soon-to-be swimming companion, Becky, whom she met within hours of our arrival.
There was a junior disco at Oasis. We sat outside enjoying a drink while Bonnie chatted with a girl of her own age and her gran, who was a very nifty mover.
Two twentysomething couples who looked ready for a night out tried to outdo the gran, and all the while a gaggle of young teenage girls walked backwards and forwards outside, checking the dancefloor every few minutes and waiting for the adults and young girls to disappear. When they did, the teenagers took over, and they were still there hours later. They were able to walk or cycle home in safety on their own, without their parents having to fret or pop in to show them how it's done.
The Center Parcs management is not sure that the families of middle-class southern England are big on family shows. They are thinking about introducing them to Longleat and their other sites - and I hope they do.
Oasis also had more to offer for Victor, given that its football coaching started for four-year-olds. It was the highlight of our stay to watch him running after a ball - even when his own goalkeeper had it in hand - with seven other boys for half an hour, understanding next to nothing of how football is played but feeling ever so grown up because he was allowed to try.
At Longleat, you had to be six to enrol, and there was a big black hole for five-year-olds. We had to retreat to the butterfly meadow for a father-and-son kickabout.
Bonnie had a go at dance classes both at Oasis and Longleat, and it was also at Longleat that she took up angling. You could hire a rod and line, bait it with bread or blackberries or sweetcorn, and you couldn't fail. A closed-off part of the boating lake was set aside for carp breeding, and after catching one within minutes Bonnie returned on three subsequent days and landed 33 fish, one of which weighed 3lbs. They all went straight back in, and the bigger ones, of course, are on camera.
Both sites, and the others in East Anglia and Nottinghamshire, are very green, cleverly designed and hidden away in forests. I hadn't seen a red squirrel since I was at primary school but there were hundreds at Oasis - friendly, too.
The accommodation is comfortable, not cramped. The buildings are detached, unobtrusive, and classy. No cars are allowed - other than in the car park - and everybody walks, cycles or takes the dinky little Center Parcs train.
In a guided walk around the site you'll learn all sorts of things about antlers, woodpeckers, giant redwoods, yew trees, and how to roast a potato in a burdock leaf.
The whole site is not under one roof. The dome is the centre of activity for the leisure pool, restaurants, shops, shows and so on, but you are living in a bubble, whether you're actually inside one or not.
And what sort of people go there? You have to have a fair bit of dosh, for sure. And I carried out a short unscientific experiment based on newspaper sales at the supermarket on site, on the basis of which I can make a few sweeping generalisations. To start with, no Racing Post. A few Guardians and Observers, and a great pillar of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. This is Middle England: give me £1 for every person I saw reading the Mail on Sunday at the poolside and I'd have enough for a week of sessions at the spa.
There is a seemingly endless list of things to do: tennis, badminton, windsurfing, canoeing, high ropes (climbing telegraph poles and that sort of thing), walks, African drumming, archery, golf, jewellery-making and so on. And lots of classes for young children, older children, grannies.
But the highlight of the site is the pool - Bonnie and Victor's favourite. There's a wave machine, a cold plunge pool, outdoor heated pool, indoor heated pool, toddlers' slides, rapids (where you'll often see children shoving granny down the steepest slope) and a selection of long, twisting slides for children of all ages, including those in their thirties and forties. So popular was it with our children that on two mornings we arrived early and had to wait for the doors to open.
If the pool was the highlight, the lowlight was the food. One advantage that Longleat held over the Lake District site was the range and quality of goods available at the on-site supermarket, which was noticeably worse at Oasis and open to improvement at both.
Perhaps it's a clever ploy to tempt you out of the kitchen and into the restaurants which, too, could have been much better. They were adequate and cheerful, but over-themed, overpriced and overcrowded.
It would be nice to find a place that didn't do breaded garlic mushrooms and hot chicken wings. What we would have loved was a Tesco Metro or a Marks and Spencer food hall on site - and so would all those Daily Mailies, I'll bet.
Asked to plump for one or the other, Oasis or Longleat, I would have to go for Longleat because it's more accessible for us, living on the South Coast - and because of the spa.
I think I liked the spa more than Bonnie liked her carp. I lounged around in a robe between visits to the Japanese salt spa, Turkish Hammam, ice room, hot pool, Finnish sauna, and best of all the Roman spa. It was in the Greek herbal spa, hidden behind a pillar and minding my own business, that I was brought back to the real world by two visitors, one the boss's assistant, the other his lover, who might have been characters from The Office (this was the M4 corridor, after all).
'Well, you know he did have a bit of a reputation before.'
'Yeah, well, I don't mind him window shopping, don't mind at all, I prefer it to be honest, it's only normal... but I just don't want him trying any of the goods...'
Later in the Japanese salt spa we had moved on from 'He really picked me up when I was down' to 'The sales ledger's looking really good. I suppose that's why we're here, bit of a bonus. We're easily going to hit the figures for the third quarter.'
All of which made it so much more enjoyable to be living in a bubble. At least for a while.
Factfile
A three-night stay at the Oasis Whinfell Forest Center Parc, Cumbria, this Easter costs from £413 for a two- bedroom Woodland Lodge, sleeping four, including the right to roam around the park and use the sub-tropical swimming 'paradise'. A 55-minute football coaching session and tournament for minis (four- to six-year-olds) costs £5.
One week's summer stay at the Longleat Center Parc, Wiltshire, in a two-bedroom comfort villa, costs from £970, including use of park and pool complex. A three-hour spa session, including access to all 12 pools and faclities costs £20.
Center Parcs (0870 520 0300)
