Holidaying with a two-year-old

So here are my top tips for taking a two-year-old on holiday alone, albeit to a friend's house:

• Borrow a portable DVD player then don't actually use it because you never got round to working out how and you manage to entertain the child with a Peppa Pig magnetic doodle board thingy, books and a colouring book.
• Prepare to stop at unexpected times or places on the journey, such as the most depressing service station on the planet (Happenden, just south of Glasgow) or the shores of Loch Lomond.
• Don't bother to plan where the child will sleep or take any kind of blow-up toddler bed because the child will be sleeping in your bed.
• Remember to have a stock of oatcakes, rice cakes, bananas, satsumas, sultanas, breadsticks and those expensive but handy organic oaty fruity bars about your person at all times.
• If you think you should take the buggy on an outing, take the sling, and if you think you should take the sling, take the buggy.
• Expect to spend a long time doing things that may become tedious to you, such as walking into the edge of the sea and out again. And in, and out again. And in, and out again.
• Do not take a toddler into a pottery shop regardless of how much you like pottery.
• Do not leave your wallet on top of the car at a petrol station and drive off 30 miles to a campsite before realising and returning to find that all your cards have been run over and strewn across the carriageway of a busy A road.
• Try to avoid having to erect a tent in a thunderstorm and torrential rain.
• Remember that the child will be more interested in muddy puddles and toadstools than sitting in the pub, even if people are playing music in the pub and he briefly wants to join in.
• Try to bypass all ice cream signs and work out how to explain that you don't carry ice cream in your pockets and one does not generally have ice cream for breakfast.
• Do have a nice time and do some of the things you want to do regardless of  how much harder they are going to be with the company of the small person.