TAHITI BED & BREAKFAST

I looked up holidays in the South Pacific this week. Tahiti, Papeete, Bora Bora - tropical islands with blinding white sand under rich blue skies; aquamarine seas, smooth and clear, by the fine slopes and the whispering palms - empty, inviting, waiting.

I can't go. I can't afford it for one thing, but that isn't actually the only reason. No, it seems that these places are almost exclusively for honeymooners. And I'm not one of those. It would be weird to turn up in paradise on your own while surrounded by affluent love-islanders.

Even if I had the gumption to do it, to supplant myself in a world of cooing couples, I still don't think I could. To go to a place like that and not be able to reminisce with anyone would be a shame - and I'd probably only ever go once, given the cost. That, I reason, is probably why Richard Branson lives on his own island, why people like me can't go to Tahiti, and why those places are constantly full of only star-crossed lovers in secluded beach huts.

What there ought to be is a sort of Tahiti Bed & Breakfast: an old house on one of those islands that's purely for travellers passing through - you know, like there is in the Lake District, or Eastbourne, or Bognor Regis. You book in for a week, dump your stuff in a sunlit room of mahogany wardrobes and flock wallpaper, then go out and enjoy the endless Pacific... with its burning sand and shady recliners under dappled palm trees. Full English Breakfast at a little round table with orange juice... followed by pina coladas and fresh fish on the edge of the deep green ocean.

"Will you have another cup?" asks Mrs Wilberforce, hovering with the teapot.

"Oh yes please," you say, folding away your copy of The Times and gazing out to the sand and tiny white waves lapping at the straw huts. "And then I think I'll go for a dip in the lagoon and swim with the dolphins."

I don't need no fancy beach hut, me. I need Mrs Wilberforce's Tahiti B&B.

Anyway...

It's raining today. It's been one of those weeks that's felt like it's had just way too much week in it. I'm super-tired. I wonder whether I need a holiday somewhere where I can just switch off the world and feel the sunshine. It might not end up being the South Pacific, but it could be somewhere. And soon.