HOLIDAY HABITS

Eoin Colfer

The Irish author of the Artemis Fowl children’s books on his best and worst trips abroad

I’M the world’s best packer. I have a toilet bag that unrolls and hangs on the mirror and inside are my emergency supplies: toothpicks, tweezers and every pill known to man. I have headache pills, diarrhea pills to upset stomach pills – I simply cut a tab of four from a packet and slide them in.

If I was on a desert island I could survive for about two years with that bag and it’s only the size of a large wallet.

Because I’m Irish I don’t trust the weather, so even if I’m going somewhere sunny I still think I need to bring woolly jumpers. The first tour of America I did was all sunny states and I packed an extra suit, a few sweaters and a fleece. My arm was nearly pulled out of the socket from hauling it around.

For a perfect holiday I need time to read in the shade. It’s kind of difficult with my four-year-old and nine-year-old sons around, but I like to try and organise things so I can get a couple of hours doing that every day. My wife Jacqueline takes them on shopping trips while I camp out under an umbrella.

I’m not a beach fan. I’d much rather sit on a hill. We lived in Italy for a year and used to go to the beach occasionally, but the guys there were so tanned and muscular and cool I never felt paler and skinnier in my life. And sand seems to stick to me more than regular people.

My worst holiday was camping in the south of France five years ago with my brother-in-law and his family. We had three kids and five adults in one little caravan and everything on the site was old. The pool was about a mile away but when you got there it was heaving with people and my little nephew slipped and bashed his chin and the blood went everywhere.

As for hotels, four years ago I stayed in one in Paris. I don’t remember its name but there it had velour wallpaper and the bathroom was under the stairs. I get allergies to dust and as I went into the room my head started to fill up. I was surprised because I was in Montmartre, which is a classy area, so I had thought it would be a nice hotel. Interview: Mark Anstead Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony is out in paperback in May

HOLIDAY HELL