The practicality of seven seats

Apparently having seven seats in your vehicle is a wonderfully practical thing. It strikes me that this will only be true if you have seven arses and not a lot of luggage. But plenty of car manufacturers are harping on about the magic number seven, so who am I to pour scorn upon their wisdom? Our car has a mere five seats, thus making it practical only for transporting two adults, a baby, two dogs and luggage for a week away. Luggage including my wetsuit and camera gear, plus the MacPac Possum backpack that I often load the little lady into and head out for a wander. So toys as well as essentials. With the dogs taking up all of the available boot space in the back of our Subaru Outback (an estate to the Brits and a wagon to the colonials) we have had to buy a roof box (the Thule Atlantis 780 if you must know) to hold our luggage, while the pram and baby seat take up all available room in the back seats. Not entirely sure how well we would have managed with another three seats taking up the space occupied by dogs. The motor still cruises nicely with the box on top with no discernible drag, and said box is easy to mount and demount single handed (cackhanded at that.) I am therefore able to state that my entire human and canine family are able to go on holiday with relative ease. Which is precisely what we did last week and what I should be writing about, rather than the relative merits of different seat and luggage configurations in motor vehicles. On with it then.