Our six-month-old woke up the morning of our Dover-Calais ferry crossing with projectile vomiting that would have been impressive if it hadn't come at a crucial moment during the loading of the car. This was already hampered by my mother-in-law misreading my instructions to bring duvet cover and towels for the French holiday cottage, and turning up with an actual duvet, pillows and other assorted bedlinen. Eventually the four of us were crowbarred into the car, along with the contents of a linen cupboard, only for the baby to develop a sudden and extreme case of diarrhoea.

Abandon, though, any images you may have about warm welcomes and a relaxing environment in which to hole up while baby recovered. My husband, having been on the road for 12 hours, eagerly got out of the car and rang the cottage owner's doorbell. No one came, so he rang again. Some time later, the door burst open and a furious madame began gesticulating madly. She expected us at 4pm, not 3.55, she said, and how dare he ring the doorbell twice.

Having calmed down, she gave us a tour of the cottage, which had no cot in the baby's bedroom despite the fact I had asked her for one. When I queried this, madame began ranting in French, using what I suspect may have been some colourful language. In the end she said we could use an old one of hers, but when my husband offered to fetch it, as it was approaching our son's bedtime, madame got into a lather again, shouting 'I am not paid to be your servant!' and instructing us to go home. Naturally, we were tempted, but we had already paid.

Thankfully, we didn't have any reason to see her again for the rest of the holiday. Then on our final morning, while we were cleaning up, I detected the stench of burning plastic. It was coming from the sofa, I discovered, which I'd pushed against a radiator without realising it. Luckily, I got to it just in time. God knows what would have happened had I destroyed her sofa.

On the day we left, madame was nowhere to be seen. Her husband bid us a cheerful, civilised farewell, and we made a dash for the ferry before he remembered to charge us for the fuel we'd used. Or maybe he felt sorry for us, having no doubt been on the receiving end of madame's wrath himself.

· Have you had a crap holiday? If so, write in and tell us about it. The writers of stories we publish will receive a copy of the Idler Book of Crap Holidays. Email crap.holidays@observer.co.uk