I'm so over it all: overtourism, oversharing, overcrowding...

It's holiday time and people are heading to destinations that were once best-kept secrets, but are now marked by jostling and queues. And instead of leaving time for the unexpected to occur, every minute is planned

- Charmain Naidoo

Tis the season to be jolly ... and to travel if you can. Only everyone else seems to have exactly the same idea, and often, the same itinerary. Want to know why? Because you blabbed about your favourite destination and shared details of that tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant in that secluded spot above that deserted beach. Well, deserted no more.

I'm sitting in my favourite Tuesday writing spot, escaping my helper's tuneless humming, which competes with the machine sound of tumbling washing and the whirr of the vacuum cleaner as it bashes against furniture legs.

My deli café, where the coffee is delicious, the pancetta crisp and the layered strips of egg covered in a rich, long-cooked tomato sauce, is usually a safe haven from the outside world: quiet and welcoming.

Not today. Today someone has taken my favourite table and I am forced to sit in a draft next to the open door.

And my lovely waiter has avoided my gaze, twice, as he moves hurriedly between tables, taking other people's orders and placing steaming bowls of napolitana-covered egg on tables that are not mine.

The secret of my favourite place is out. I spot the old woman with a lazy eye and a Nanny McPhee wart on her forehead. Each morning, we ask after our mutual health then politely return to our book, newspaper or laptop.

Now I shrug as I spread my hands to indicate my displeasure at the full café. She rolls her eyes, and the black hair growing from her carbuncle quivers.

The two women who work quietly in one corner, often my only other companions, shake their heads and point to the table next to them where a man is talking loudly into his headphones as he takes a meeting. In a crowded restaurant.