AT this time of year, women's magazines are choc-full of tips on how to look and feel gorgeous while travelling. You know the kind of thing: "Bring aromatherapy oils to dab onto your temples." "Carry a water atomiser to spritz your face and avoid dehydrated skin." They might well add, as bikini-time looms: "Lightly spritz tongue with water spray instead of having proper food for your lunch." It wouldn't surprise me. I've just read the following holiday "tip": "To make hips and thighs look slim on the beach, dig two tunnels under your thighs and make a dent in the sand for your butt. Put a towel on top and sit down. Hey presto - no bulging thighs or hips!"

Anyway, that's beside the point. All this talk of dabbing and spritzing sounds so serene and dreamy and gives a completely misleading picture of travel. The reality - at least, if you are travelling with children - is very different. First off, if travelling by car, quit your facial spritzing for a moment and ensure that you have ample sick receptacles. Carrier bags will do, though bear in mind that most have holes in. We are driving home after a weekend in New Galloway when I realise that the full carrier bag, which one of my sons so kindly handed to me as a gift, is now leaking vomit all over my lap. Provided they're not driving, what the adult must do now is lower the window and hold out the dripping bag with a rigid arm. As a bonus, this creates an amusing diversion for walkers and forces the berk who'd been driving millimetres behind you to drop right back.

I am ashamed to admit that, on our next drive through twisty country lanes, I'm forced to throw a sick bag onto waste ground where it catches on the branch of a tree and swings like some bizarre, dripping sculpture. I know - flinging carrier bags around willy-nilly is Very Bad but there's no sniff of a bin for miles around. What else was I supposed to do with a bag of slop? Stuff it in my handbag?

One option, I guess, is to never go to the countryside at all, where roads tend to be at their most twisty - or at least not until the children have outgrown motion sickness or are capable of driving themselves, whichever happens soonest. In fact even urban or motorway driving poses challenges, as either way there is no escape. It's like being hemmed in at home on a rainy day, but worse as the children are all squished together on the back seat and everyone needs the toilet. "Stop bickering," I bark, my cheeks bulging with nicotine lozenges, "or I'll turn around right now and drive home." Has anyone ever carried out such a threat - ie transported horrified children back home, unloaded the car which took about 10 weeks to pack and forgone a day out or even a holiday all because of some light elbow-jabbing in the back? No, because "I'll turn around right now" - like "You're grounded forever" - is an empty threat, and therefore pointless.

"We are going home," my son points out helpfully.

This is what venturing out of the house does to us. We forget where we're trying to go, let alone how to get there. I remember trying to drive from central London to Stansted airport with two hollering babies, and suddenly realising that I hadn't the foggiest recollection of how to get there. I'd have been less daunted if I'd been trying to transport us to some obscure suburb of Manila.

I admire and envy friends who take their young charges on extended trips around Morocco or Peru when a simple drive to Dumfriesshire tests us to our limits. And it's not only driving: ferries trigger cascades of vomit (obviously) and a barrage of wants in the gift shops. While trains and planes don't, mercifully, have proper shops, they do spark almighty strops about who gets to sit next to the window or Dad.

Heck, that's fine by me. They can all cram around their father while I sit, alone and friendless, happily spritzing myself.

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