My brother and I were aged 13 and 12 when my parents decided that the family should experience a different summer holiday from the familiar coast of north Devon. My mother scrutinised the holiday ads in The Lady for something suitably sedate and in due course we arrived as guests of a couple living in Cornwall. They were apparently minor Belgian aristocrats, emigres who had bought a large old house that they shared in the summer. They also ran a small caravan park and bred English mastiff dogs.

The couple were in their late sixties, although the man was tall, very fit and appeared younger than his diminutive and quiet wife. To my brother and I, he was an exotic and eccentric personality, whose antics included standing on the edge of mine shafts to drop rocks while we counted the seconds before they hit the bottom. He would also throw large stones at startled walkers in the valley below shouting, 'Catch thees one!'

After a rain-sodden week and a minor car accident, he went completely mad. I was woken by my parents in the middle of the night to hear him outside rattling the door, 'Let me in! I keel you!'

Fortunately the men in white coats arrived before he managed to harm any of us. His wife crumpled and my parents were obliged to help her. One of my tasks included rounding up two enormous mastiffs in the dark to lock them in their night kennel. One of them was in the late stages of pregnancy and went into labour, producing a dozen puppies. Meanwhile, my brother was taken ill with what we later learnt was glandular fever.

I went to stay with my uncle and aunt who ran a hotel in Woolacombe and who arranged for me to take a cruise to Lundy Island. Alas, I sat on the sun deck there and back. The next day I was sent to hospital with sunstroke.

The next year we returned to the holiday shack in Devon.

· 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