15) THE ITALIAN JOB

There must be so many stories like this around at the moment. Where were you when you first heard about the ash cloud? How did you wangle getting back home? How many days off work and school did have? What did you have to reschedule at great cost in the form of mobile phone, extra hire car, train or hotel fees? Well here's our version of events....

It was not the most restful holiday idea to begin with: the four of us staying with friends living near Naples who had five children under 10. But we'd missed our friend Kirsty's 40th and had always wanted to visit the land of pizza, pasta, ice cream and ancient ruins. A recipe for the perfect family holiday, surely, with built-in entertainment from other small people meaning a chance for the grown ups to catch up over chilled Prosecco or lush Chianti?!

In Italy, the Easter holiday was over so Kirsty & Nick's children still had to get to school and all the youngsters were early risers anyway, so it was definitely going to be more of an adventure than a chance to devour a stack of novels. We were up for that. But after the travel chaos caused by the outpourings from an Icelandic volcano with an unspellable let alone pronouncable name, it proved to be a memorable holiday for the craziest reasons!

It was halfway through our week-long holiday when I heard what had happened. I switched on the news to drown out the sound of the early morning cacophony being created by those five children as well as my two - as WELL as two from another family who were passing through on the way to Sorrento. It seemed so unlikely. Here we were, admiring the pumice stones we had collected on our trek up a cloud-covered Mount Vesuvius the previous day, and now, on BBC Breakfast, there was talk of another less sleepy volcano causing a cloud of ash that was disrupting flights.

Our initial thoughts were that it would soon, literally, blow over and we'd be on our way. But I made some wan comment about how not-terrible it would be if we were forced to extend our stay because flights were cancelled. An underground tour of old Naples and a drive down the stunning hairpin bends of Positano later, that was about to become a reality.

In theory, we didn't have to rush back I suppose. I was meant to be working on Monday 19th but knew that, as a freelance, though I hated to let people down, I could be replaced. I also had an interview which I thought I could reschedule and, in any case, felt my chances of getting that job were slim. The boys would miss a bit of school but dragging them round Herculaneum and practicing our Italian accents would compensate for that a little. My husband would miss work and a stint at being 'duty' but could contact colleagues to swap with someone. So, all these rearrangements were made - we'd never found our mobile phones more useful!

I was tempted to wait it out and see when we could get back by conventional means, but a fear of flying caused concern at potentially being one of the first bunch of passengers to brave the atmospheric elements. Our decision to head back by road was prompted by our friend's coincidental need to head to Portsmouth for a course at the end of the week and get his tempestuous VW Caravello vehicle back to the UK so he could exchange it for a new, more reliable people carrier better designed to cope with Italian pot-holes, drivers and their Waltons-size offspring.

After a surreal meal in an eclectic restaurant built inside yet another volcanic crater - this one distinctly less troublesome - things became definite. Online, it became obvious that things were more chaotic than we had envisaged. A rail strike in parts of France eliminated train travel as an option. The usual Dover to Calais ferry & Eurotunnel routes were fully booked. The only available channel crossing we could find was at 0400 on Monday morning from Dieppe in France to Newhaven near Brighton. Apart from the early hour, that suited us fine - giving us two days to drive there and with the chance to stop off at my husband's parents in northern France to freshen up.

Scrapping plans to visit the island of Procida, we cut short our stay by a day and started packing. This left poor Kirsty to cope with the melee of clearing up after our departure and the inconvenience of us taking off in the only vehicle that could comfortably suit her entire brood.

So, leaving early was one unexpected turn of events. The second was acknowledging how amazingly well our two lively boys, who get fidgetty if they go a couple of hours without running around kicking a ball, coped with being cooped up in a tin box on wheels with ever dwindling amounts of sleep over the successive few days. They took it all in their stride, hardly complained, slept almost on command and I got the impression that if I'd told them we now had to get a hot air balloon to Ougadougou at 2 a.m., they wouldn't have batted an eyelid!

The third was when Vincent the Van, as we christened the Carvello after feeling the need to offer verbal encouragement to the vehicle we were in, gave up the ghost!

He had battled on, to be fair, bravely lasting out when a petrol station failed to materialise during another force of nature - a giant electrical storm. The rain drops were so fat they caused local drivers, renowned for their fearlessness, to shelter under motorway bridges or on the hard shoulder. As Brits used to deploying windscreen wipers at full pelt on a regular basis, we simply ploughed on, eyes extra-peeled in the hope of a glorious Agip or Servicio sign. We must have been on the last few vapours of diesel by the time we pulled in, gratefully, to fill up.

Laying to rest our visions of huddling by the roadside in flimsy rain coats while we summoned some kind of roadside recovery job, we trundled on. Vincent was noisy, rattly, throaty and seemed to have an arthritic gear box, but had recently had a lot of work done on him, so we thought he'd survive the trip. We ticked off the kilometres - almost reaching 1000 - but he then complained of the metallic version of a headache by showing us his battery warning light.

Inconveniently, at this point, we were due to head through what seemed like the 50th motorway tunnel in the Alpine mountains - but this was the biggest beast at Frejus and it came with a hefty €46.40 toll fee. There were confused scenes when we turned up there with a huge collection of lorries and cars forming a car park effect at the entrance. Unsure what was going on, we barged into the queues in recently-acquired Italian style.

Just as we thought we were finally going in and exultant after almost hitting our target of making it beyond Rome, Florence and through Italy on the first day of driving, steam appeared from under the bonnet and driver Nick could not shift the gear stick. Gestured to pull over, Nick managed to force the vehicle into first but amidst a whiff of burning oil, we were forced to switch off the engine and wait 10 minutes while it cooled down before the authorities would let us enter.

Thankfully, the storm had finished by then but it was with bated breath that we drove through the white-sided, claustrophobic bore-hole, dazzled by lights, and 'phewed' our way out the other side. To have broken down in a storm would have been a morale-dampening experience but to break down in a tunnel inside a mountain would have been a huge, not to say panic-attack inducing problem!

Buoyed by Vincent's tenacity, we ploughed on. It's all a bit of a blur now but as it was the early hours of the morning, the mother in me had set my sights on a comfortable roadside motel in which we could at least get ourselves horizontal for a while before resuming our cushioned but none-the-less noisy expedition. In fact, the engine was so rattle-and-hum that the kids couldn't hear the dialogue from the film on the in-car DVD player that was to be our saving grace when cooped-up tantrums threatened. However, delighted at this rare technological treat, they seemed happy enough to guess what was going on.

(It was Nim's Island, by the way, in case anyone out there can fill me in on why Jodie Foster was leading some kind of OCD existence as a writer and then ended up living out the very plot she was scripting, on some desert island with a buccanner character played by the dazzling Gerard Butler.)

I knew Nick and my husband would rather have shared the driving and ploughed on through the night instead of stopping. But I was concerned that Vincent needed a break; knew I wouldn't get any sleep amidst the tight turns, noise and nerves of our escapade and thought we'd all fare better after a genuine rest. However, my tactful observations that we'd just passed an Ibis sign or that that picture of a bed on the road sign looked interesting, went either unheard or ignored for a while longer. And, in the end, thank goodness they did!

We stopped at one Campanile, only to be thwarted by a bizarre warren of one-way signs which didn't seem to lead to our intended destination at all. So we stopped an hour later at a second ray of hope, only to find, armed with two teddies and three pillows, that they were frustratingly 'complet'!

If we had just been our family, I would normally have dissolved into grumpy, sleep-deprived abusiveness by this point, reminding all males present (and I was utterly out-numbered) that the fairer sex had suggested HOURS AGO that booking somewhere to stay might have been a good idea. But we were so aware that our plight could very easily lead in that direction that our attitudes had morphed into one of 'this is going to be some story to tell', rather than frustration.

And again, this proved serendipitous (thanks for the thesaurus-ness Nick!) As someone who used to get car sick and who generally does all the family driving because my husband has a different anticipatory reflex to me (i.e. I tend to gasp and put my right foot to the floor seconds before he does when I'm his passenger!) I was keen to take my turn at the wheel.

With the help of some caffeine, the boys asleep and daylight breaking, I got to know the Caravello's foibles and ploughed on down the motorway with the view of endless flat fields blurring away out of the windows. Then, over the brow of a hill, I felt a slight clunk and the speedo dial started decelerating despite my right foot being flat to the floor.

Luckily, there was little traffic and I slowly cruised to a halt on the hard shoulder by a conveniently located SOS phone. Within 20 minutes, and thanks to Nick's impeccable French, a huge mechanic's truck pulled up and Vincent the van was hauled onto it as we jumped into the driver's cab, to the boys' great excitement.

Jean-Luc, the mechanic, drove us all to his garage in the nearby village of Messin and my eldest son and I went to stretch our legs (and I found another hotel - again, in vain!) while the men assessed the damage. By the time I returned, Jean-Luc had declared the vehicle kaput, mort, finis! It was then my job to steer the vehicle backwards while the men pushed him into a graveyard of similarly kaput contraptions - many with British number plates. We had thought that a new battery or some tinkering with the alternator or transmission (these being the only parts of the engine I could name!) might be possible. But, sadly, this was not to be. Indeed, Nick had to pay Jean-Luc for the privilege of him having the car for spare parts, which seemed the wrong way round to me.

It was then that that a couple of lines from the Italian Job sprung to mind: "He was only meant to blow the bloody doors off!" and "Rozzer's having trouble with his differential..."

But anyway, Jean-Luc volunteered to take us to a nearby hotel beside a lake and my baggy-eyed, jaded brain started to throw serious credit card swipes at this suggestion! Despite this not materialising, of all the places to break down, this was a perfect one with a restaurant, gorgeous views, a children's play area, cafe, benches, boats, you name it. The added bonus was that my husband's parents lived within reasonable reach and they kindly cancelled all their plans to come to our aide, driving a vehicle each, so that we could borrow one to drive back to England in and meet our planned channel crossing.

They arrived around five hours later to find us camped outside a tourist office, sunbathing deliriously, having at least had a snack, cleaned our teeth, washed our faces and changed some clothes. The three hour drive to their house was tortuous but most of us slept, there was the joy of air-conditioning and it was great to offload our worries and unwind in familiar company.

Once in the little village of Framecourt, the boys just wanted to run about while the grown ups showered and slept. We were woken at 9:30 pm to the mouth-watering fragrance of crisp roast pork with all the trimmings followed by fresh strawberries and ice cream. The men then had a power nap while the rest of us watched the news for the latest travel updates - at that stage, the flying ban had just been extended but test flights were being carried out.

Leaving the in-laws behind at midnight, we set off on the two-hour drive to Dieppe armed with a picnic in case of further eventualities and with the boys once more nodding off. Arriving at the port in plenty of time, we were relieved to see that though there were lots of foot passengers, our worries about queues of lorries and other vehicles were unfounded.

Although we envied those passengers who had baggsed the large, comfortable airline-style seats, we experienced a calm, quiet four-hour crossing and somehow managed to fold our bodies into neck-cricking sleeping positions in the main lounge bucket chairs of the SS Seven Sisters.

Other passengers slept on the floor, the window sill, with heads on tables, in the toddler's well-padded play area - the place was awash with exhaustion. As we started to pull into Newhaven at sunrise, other people's stories started to unfold.

The table of four next to us hadn't known each other until they had tried to check in at an airport the previous day. Told they wouldn't be flying anywhere, they managed to club together for a hire car and travelled across the continent together.

The elderly couple opposite us had spent an extra thousand pounds on hotel stays and train travel to get to the ferry and had no idea how they were supposed to get a train for the final leg of their return journey to their London home.

They told us of an acquaintance who had started his trek home by train Montenegro, where so many passengers boarded that the driver refused to budge. That was until the passengers effectively mutinied and pinned him to the carriage demanding to be driven onwards!

So, after a diversion to Gatwick to collect our own car, we eventually pootled home beneath eerily quiet skies and Airport Closed roadsigns feeling, really, quite lucky. And bed had never been more welcoming.

14) OK COMMUTER

I haven't been able to write for ages as we've moved house - more on that another time - and it's taken the obligatory 30 days to get broadband sorted.

But now, I'm back - occasionally. So here's my latest missive:....

I don't own a Temperley, Chloe or McCartney let alone Jimmy Choos or Laboutins (can I even spell it??) For one thing, I can't afford to and for another I'm not sure my 5 ft 3" frame could carry them off. I have an interest in fashion - despite my tomboyish youth and my mother's strictly M & S sense of style.

I'd love the kind of capsule wardrobe fashionista's often recommend in the glossy mags. In fact, I have a friend, who's strictly Boden, who hangs each outfit on a hanger complete with necklace on top and shoes beneath. Maybe that's taking things a bit too far. After all, you have to allow for changing your mind along with the climate and mixing things up a bit. My style is a bit more "Oh crap! What am I gonna wear that suits cycling to the station, traipsing across town on the tube, walking round an overly heated office that's then overly chilled post 5pm that might double up as suitable for interviewing someone vaguely glam or important?"

Maybe there's a niche in the market for someone to open up a new label for people like me. There are other additions too, that might someone with younger children than mine. Like a cardigan or blouse with a thin layer on the top that you can rip off post-puking or dribbling when you say goodbye at nursery drop-off. The possibilities are endless! I feel a new career coming on... Might call the new line ok commuter!!!