On holiday

Not here. Out to lunch. AWOL. Yoicks, yippee, gone awaaaaaaay! I wish.

 You think, don’t you, that when the chaos of term crashes into that final Friday before a week’s holiday, that you are going to get a brief respite from early mornings and the eternal hunt for The Missing Shoe.

Ha. As if.

As all good parents know (and the less good ones too – count me in) little Jonny’s internal alarm clock takes at least four weeks of the six in the summer to reset, so a half term is a mere nothing; he still patters in at 6:45 am hissing sibilantly in what he fondly believes is a whisper “Is it morning yet?” In our case we have the imminent excitement of a visiting grandmother, so the timecheck is accompanied by “Is Granny coming today?”.

No, son; three more days at least by my last count. No, it isn’t morning yet, I don’t care if it’s light outside and the clock has an eight on it; go back to sleep. Please.

Fat chance. One or other parent (frequently the other) finds themselves downstairs way before comfort time dishing out the Shreddies and insisting on milk consumption by children before the cat gets it.

The other myth about half term in teaching households is that you spend it with your feet up, or swanning around Europe on skis. I have vague memories of the days when I had a budget rather that what my father used to refer to euphemistically as a “small but lively” bank account. These days Dear Henry is more likely to spend the time paddling around in the cellar. Literally as it happens; he called the kids to come and see the indoor swimming pool that had accumulated over the winter months. Strangely they didn’t feel like a dip in the murky and icy waters before he got the pump working. Or after. But my son did rate going into the “celery” with Daddy above a shopping trip to the local supermarket. Does that say more about him or the supermarket, I wonder?

So; it’s Friday tomorrow. I feel like I’ve got nothing much done. The kids have gone swimming with Granny (and Jonny went down the Big Slide on his own – six times). I’ve made some curtains. Dear Henry has nearly sorted the insulation in the celery, so we’ll no longer get cold posteriors when sat at the computer in the room above. And I’m talking icy. Progress has been made on the six-month old project of the pergola. Look, it’s a large one, OK? I’ve had two meetings about The School (no half term for the wicked – what did I do in a previous life?) and cleared two table lamps and two chairs legs off the photocopier so I could use it. Granny and the kids built model JCBs on the kitchen table.  

Standard school holiday then. “Nothing much done”. Maybe I expect too much...