It is Bank Holiday! It is the hottest day of the year so far! We are going to the seaside!

An hour later and we are sitting on the A64, having ground to a halt just outside of York. Scarborough is distressingly far away. Surely, I say, half to myself, it can’t be bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to the coast. That would just be unreasonable. I have a brief flash of what it would be like trying to escape from a meteor impact or the rising of the dead or the Amityville Horror.

The atmosphere in the car gets more muted as we crawl onwards. We decide we should have set off several hours, if not several days, earlier. The traffic reports keep punctuating the music, some idiot sitting in a studio somewhere chirrupping like a cretin: “You’ve got up, seen the weather, and decided to go to the coast! Unfortunately, everyone else has had the same idea!”

I seethe at the radio. Just tell me what I already know – that this traffic jam goes on into eternity. If you want a picture of the future, imagine staring at this long line of cars, trucks and caravans – forever.

We do finally get to Scarborough, but I am in a foul mood, which can’t even be lightened by the opportunity to hand over 40p to a man in a booth for the privilege of emptying my bladder in the toilet over which he holds dominion like some medieval prince. We walk up the prom, seemingly against the tide of humanity that has flooded to Scarborough purely just to get on my wick.

There are queues everywhere. Queues for the chippies, queues for ice cream, queues for donuts. We squeeze on to the beach, finding the only two square foot of sand not occupied.

I am sent to get four portions of fish and chips from Harry Ramsden’s across the road. It is hard to see where the queue ends and where the masses of milling people begins. I take my chances and stand in the beating sun for about an hour until I am shuffled towards a till. I am the only person in the queue, possibly the only person in Scarborough, without a tattoo. I feel like some weird, freakish outsider.

By the time I get to the till I am so hot and bothered I mess the order up. I return with four portions of fish and chips, but two of them have unasked-for mushy peas and the other two are splatted with too much tomato sauce.

Everyone is unhappy with me. In protest, I refuse to take off my jumper and sit on my towel, sweating and glowering, surrounded by people. The children fail to pick up on my bad mood and insist on enjoying themselves in the sea.

I do not speak on the journey home, which takes twice as long as it should due to everyone leaving Scarborough at the same time. I have quite possibly ruined everyone’s day. At work the next day, someone asks if I had a nice Bank Holiday. “We went to Scarborough!” I shout hysterically. “It was BRILLIANT!”