On holiday, catastrophising is normal. A traffic jam can happen anywhere in the world and it is a nightmare abroad, where time is more precious. One of the worst catastrophes during my recent trip to Tenerife was when I finally got the company assembled for my full English breakfast. As I tried to crack the first egg to fry over-easy, I let out a high-pitched woman’s scream. The eggs my womenfolk had bought were pre-boiled. A nightmare. On the packet it had said ‘Cooked eggs’ – but in Spanish, of course. Horrid white golf balls in their shells. In desperate need of winter sun, I had been allowed by my elder daughter to join her holiday with two female friends on condition that I ‘stop being negative and overreacting to minor setbacks’. The fatwa also barred ‘retro-negging’ (grumbling about things that have gone wrong in the past) and ‘speculo-negging’ (grumbling...
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