WE'RE not that far into the holiday season, yet despatches from the resorts are reporting some right holiday horrors.

It's nothing to do with hotels that are really building sites in disguise, or flight delays that see you reaching retirement before you reach your destination. Neither is it the fact that your luggage has a better holiday than you as it tours the globe on an unscheduled world tour.

It is the sad fact that people have made the wrong choice of holiday partners and they realise it only after they have been imprisoned together day and night on their dream vacation.

It's true that you do not get to know someone until you have lived with them. People can be friends for years but that friendship can be turned into hatred when they are thrown together for a week or more.

It's all right meeting up once or twice a week and eating out, or calling round to each other's houses enjoying chat and drink.

And under the influence of drink on a dank December night in England, it seems the best idea in the world to suggest a holiday. The planning is the best bit. You talk for hours about where to go, what sort of accommodation, won't it be great. You set off all excited, settle in and then the rot sets in.

Make the mistake of choosing accommodation under one roof and you are tied, thrown together for 24 hours a day, trapped like contestants in the Big Brother house. And you've all seen what happens in there.

It might take a day or a week, but you start to notice things about your friends that you, quite frankly, don't like.

He has an annoying habit of picking his nose or his feet, something he's never displayed during nights out back home. She takes hours in the bathroom, gets crabby when she's hungry and leaves her underwear scattered round the apartment.

He always wants to be off to the bar, taking your husband out boozing and leaving you girls holding the baby.

You cannot agree where to eat tonight or whether to go out clubbing later, or whether to take a boat trip tomorrow.

Everything is always what they want to do, while you and your partner start to simmer inside.

If families with children go on holiday together, the risk of a rift is mega-multiplied. Why did you never realise before that their child is the anti-Christ? The spoiled little swine is surly, demanding and unchecked. He's always either bullying or snatching things off your perfectly-behaved little darling.

He always gets what he wants just to shut him up and you want to slap him. Make the mistake of intervening and you are immediately attacking his parents.

You've seen him playing up at the supermarket back home, especially at the check-out where all the goodies are strategically placed by clever marketing people. But now he's doing it all day long and you just cannot escape it in your holiday home.

Tempers flare, harsh words and tears between parents, and a good friendship is heading down the pan.

"Don't you tell me how to bring up my child. What about yours? He's a spoiled little brat and you let him get away with murder."

Someone is about to be thrown out of the Big Brother house.

Holidays together ought to be obligatory for couples thinking of wedlock. They are an ideal litmus test for compatibility. Survive a holiday together and you can take everything that's thrown at you in matrimony.

But when couples or families decide on a joint holiday, their planning should not be through the idyllic lenses of rose-coloured specs. At least stay in different apartments. Then you can get away from them for a while and whisper out your frustrations.

Make a pact. Agree before you go that you might want to spend some days or evenings doing your own thing. Have your days apart and meet up later.

Otherwise you could all be heading back to the airport not speaking, sitting through the two-hour check-in at opposite sides of the departure lounge.

Back home you avoid each other in the street or pub and you don't call round at their house any more.

And that's awful because then you have to go through the laborious process of finding new friends to go on holiday with.

Updated: 09:51 Tuesday, August 05, 2003