FORGET the hours - the days - you spent at Heathrow if you started this summer's holiday when the schools broke up.

No-one wants to hear about British Airways' strikes, lack of announcements, false promises and failure to tempt you to fly with them ever again, even if it means tackling the Channel in a rubber dinghy.

The only holiday horror story worth peddling round your friends this year is the holiday from hell you had when it was a gang effort. This assumes that the friends you're talking to aren't the ones who shared that holiday but if they were, it's unlikely you're still on speaking terms. It seems there's nothing more certain to end beautiful friendships, even those forged on the first day in the infants' playground, than going to that gite or villa together.

It's long been known that holidays, like Christmas, can spell doom for couples. For 50 weeks a year they live separate lives, off to work in the morning, and eating in front of the television in the evening. He plays football or cricket at weekends; she catches up on the housework or meets "the girls".

Then, for two whole weeks, they have time to spend together. All day. Every day. And they find they don't actually have too much in common. Holidays with friends can make the same point, but involve more than two people. Two may not be company for each other, three isn't always a crowd but much above that and there's enough to take sides if tensions arise. They probably will.

Unless they've been part of a student flat-share or housemates in pre-family life, we don't know what our friends are like to live with. Husbands or wives and children can be even lesser-known quantities. If we've stayed in their homes, or they in ours, we've all been on our best behaviour so it's not the same.

The hygiene freak, the fresh air fiend, the hearty rounder-up of people who hate beach games, or this year's particular hazard to holiday catering, the Atkins dieter, may all lurk beneath the shorts and T-shirt of someone we thought we knew. Finding out two days into the fortnight that your very best friend irritates the heck out of you by being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 7am when your idea of a holiday is to surface in time for a late lunch isn't going to cement the friendship much beyond day three.

Most years, when the holiday tale to have is of undiscovered villages with superb local wine, or of sensational wildlife somewhere Dr Livingstone missed, I'm the one sitting there with nothing to contribute. This year, I'm the one sitting looking smug.

For well over 20 years, I've holidayed with a crowd of friends under the same roof. Some of the older ones have died; new ones have arrived and slotted in. Some of us see each other between holidays, some of us don't, but the join is seamless come August and, as far as we know, the few who no longer come didn't take their bats home in anger. For many years, three generations pitched up.

One likely explanation for all this against-the-rules harmony is that under that one roof are several self-contained flats. Each flatful gets up when it likes, eats what it likes when it likes, and no-one falls out over the best bedroom or the en-suite.

We may all end up at the same pub at lunchtime; we take turns to be hosts at the end of each evening with a buffet-style snack; some of us may join up at events at other times - and there's another clue to the harmony. We're all folkies attending an annual festival.

And the wages of smug is probably looming disharmony this year, but I do hope not.