With the Easter holidays on the horizon, author Kathy Lette looks back at family holidays past, and remembers the highs, lows and near-death experiences

Forget Einstein. My theory of relativity is that distant relatives are the best kind – and the further away the better. This is what I think to myself every time I set off on a family holiday. And I’m sure I’m not alone. In every car snaking its way along the motorway this Easter, there’ll be a woman sucking in her breath, clutching the dashboard. When her husband asks what’s the matter, she’ll just grab her chest and whimper, “Oh, nothing.”

The trouble with family holidays involving a car trip is that every man secretly thinks rally driver is his true vocation. He’s so convinced that he’s an excellent driver that when he gets a note under his windscreen saying ‘parking fine’, he just assumes it’s a compliment on his manoeuvring skills.

However, on our annual Easter trek to the coast to holiday with my entire extended family, I’ve learnt to be quite restrained – it’s been at least five years since I stuffed a road map up my husband’s nose.

Even more hazardous are sibling rivalries. My sisters and I are only slightly more active than a pot plant. We get winded licking stamps. The most athletic activity my brothers-in-law undertake is getting the lid off a jam jar. But come the communal family holiday and I’m soon so sore from competitive hiking, cycling and wind surfing that I have to get into bed one section of my body at a time. The only way I can brush my teeth is to place the toothbrush on the sink and move my mouth back and forth over it.

And there’s nothing I won’t attempt, so as not to be outshone. Last year it was body boarding. “Sure, there have been injuries and deaths in the surf, but none of them serious,” my nephew assured, as I followed the family into the swell. The waves slapped my face repeatedly. As the next nauseous moment came, tumbling and rumbling me like a human sock in a giant washing machine, I realised that ‘body surfing’ is just a euphemism for ‘organ donor’. A very embarrassing rescue mission ensued.

And yet, with hilarious Easter egg hunts and riotous games of charades, by the end we all agreed that it had been the best holiday ever. The great thing about your family is they know all about you, and still like you anyway. Which is why I’ll be putting up with the bad driving, sibling rivalry and daredevil stunts again this year. And let’s face it, close encounters with surf lifesavers aren’t so bad. I mean, at my age, what a novelty to hear heavy breathing again.

Kathy Lette is sure that her latest novel, Courting Trouble, would make excellent holiday reading

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This article has been tagged Opinion, Culture