Summer Lovin'

Summer holidays are odd.  As a teacher you spend the ENTIRE year hanging out for this six week break and then it seems to be over in a flash.  I almost take the fun out of the summer holidays but being obsessed by the fact I should be enjoying every single little minute of them.  I counsel myself as we go through, after a week by saying, 'well, I've still got five weeks to go' - FIVE WEEKS!  Halfway through I'm equally as buoyant, and then we get to now; two weeks to go, and you realise that you are nearer the end than the beginning.  I comfort myself at the point by saying it is basically like starting an Easter or Christmas break now and look at all the time I've had already.  Next weekend I'll be convincing myself it is like the start of a half term and all the while I have a slightly suppressed, unusual sensation that when work starts again, I might quite like it.  (Oops - I've said it aloud now.)

We really are making the most of these holidays but I think I got a little bit overexcited and may have packed too much in.  Our suitcases were unpacked last weekend from France and repacked for Suffolk with a day at Warner Bros. Studios squeezed in the middle. We're back today from Suffolk and although a lovely time was had; the constant high of excitement from the kids resulted in slightly less-than-perfect behaviour between 4am and 5.15am this morning.  (I should have stuck to my resolute guns about not letting them share a room!)  We are all officially knackered.  I wonder if this is full-time-working-mother-guilt rearing her ugly head again?  Everybody says to me that teaching is so perfect when you have small kids because you can really re-group in the holidays.  It's true!  I have spent so much quality time with my lovelies in the last four weeks that I've completely remembered why I decided to work full time! ;-)  I'm kidding.  Sort of.

Yet still I can't seem to stop: Wicked tomorrow, Gullivers on Monday, Whipsnade on Tuesday - so much to do and it is imperative that we must all have fun at all times.  In fact, all you end up with is spoilt brats that moan when they have to fill an hour or two of their own time at home with a house and garden full of toys.  'But I'M BORED...' laments Zachary when I have dared to remove an IPad away from his trance-like gaze.

The added problem is that the no alcohol in the week situation really doesn't seem to apply to school holidays.  I'm a miserable bastard during term time so school holidays is when I get to do a huge amount of socialising.  Dinner on a Monday night?  Sure, why not?  Wine tasting on a Wednesday?  Brilliant - bring it on.  The only problem is that if you remember correctly my alcohol intake is meant to be vaguely limited at the moment and I'm currently trying to schedule in my next blood test when I will have had at least 48 hours off the sauce.  September 6th it is then!

I also reckon that I have spent approximately ten hundred million pounds in the last four weeks having so much fun.  I feel a few days of £1.50 morning cinema tickets (because who wants to eat popcorn at 10am?!) and laps of the park on scooters coming on to ensure there is enough money left in the bank to pickle my liver in cheap champers before it is head down again until half term.  Happy holidays everyone!  :-)