The Summer Holidays Have Begun

Written by Gerard on Wednesday 30 June 2010

Yes indeed, the Summer Holidays have officially begun.

Do you remember when you had that last half-day at school? The teachers are busy tidying things up and the classroom looks bare with all the posters and paintings taken down and sent home. Instead of lessons, there's a video to watch or you just idle about chatting with the handful of other pupils who've bothered to show up.

Now we're dealing with the last day of school from the other end - we're the parents now. And that means getting the kids ready to go into school in plain clothes. No lunches, just a light snack and some sweets for the classroom party. Gifts for the teachers if you're feeling especially thankful toward them.

You can still sense that feeling of winding down. Some of the classrooms you pass by have been stripped down completely. The teachers are in slightly more casual dress. The car park's virtually empty as some families take advantage of off-peak prices and are overseas already. As we do the final pick-up of the year, chairs are up on tables, cloakrooms have been emptied and there's a stack of lost property on a makeshift tressle table at the front of the school.

60 days. 60 days until it all starts again. Take a fortnight out for a foreign holiday - yay! And then we have to find some way to occupy our sproglings throughout the rest of the summer. Oh, and manage somehow to keep the quids rolling in to pay the mortgage!

Here's to balmy weather with the occasional rainshower, and little days out and picnics and exploring Northern Ireland as we go along. Here's to not being stuck in the house with laptops glued to us for eight weeks. Here's to the summer, folks.

Photo credit: EsDax on Flickr.