EVERY morning for the last week, I've woken up with a gnawing dread in the pit of my stomach: the kind of dread I used to associate with exams, but which is now induced by a much more exacting challenge than producing 1,000 words on King Lear.
Yes, you've guessed it. The start of the seven-week summer break is fast approaching. On Friday, at approximately 1pm, the school bell will ring out the beginning of the children's freedom and the end of mine. And I am physically and psychologically
unprepared for the transition.
Even if June 27 hadn't been marked in the calendar with a row of smiley (one might almost say smirking) faces since January 1, I would have known it was approaching from the change in the weather.
After weeks of sunshine, the first few hesitant drops of rain fell on the day of Son Number Two's school trip and the thunder clouds (both literal and metaphorical) have been gathering ever since. I know with the absolute certainty of a veteran that as hordes of shiny faces come pouring through the gates later this week, the heavens will open. And there's every chance there will be no let-up until the middle of August.
Sorry to sound so despondent. It's not that I don't want to spend time with my three lovely sons. It's more that they no longer want to spend time with me. And yet, while not spending time with me, they will nevertheless require me to be there. And so, for the foreseeable future, I, along with many other parents, will take on the role of discreet facilitator. Like the butler in The Remains Of The Day, I will exist only to serve them, dispensing food, breaking up fights and ferrying them hither and thither as unobtrusively as possible, before retreating back into the shadows so as not to cause embarrassment.
On occasion, if I am lucky, they will tolerate my company – particularly if there's a cinema ticket or other incentive on offer – but even then my presence will have to be mitigated by other benefits: in other words they'll want to bring their friends.
This is a trend that has developed incrementally. At first, it was just short forays to the park, then it was entire afternoons, and now no day out is complete unless I'm walking Pied Piper-like with a trail of children behind me.
It's not that my boys particularly eschew old-fashioned pastimes such as hide and seek or tig. Quite the opposite. Given the choice, they like nothing more than staying at home and playing with the (many) other boys in our street.
The problem is they're no longer toddlers, hiding behind curtains and bursting into giggles long before they're found. They are big, boisterous boys, with no spatial awareness and no apparent control over their flailing limbs.
When they were little, we used to compare them with Thing One and Thing Two (and, in our case, Thing Three) from The Cat In The Hat. They would run through the house like tiny whirlwinds, leaving a trail of toys behind them. Now they're more like a trio of Terminators unleashing their awesome destructive power on what's left of our home. One game of sardines can lay waste to freshly-planted flower beds; one water gun fight can cause a mini-tsunami. Sometimes going out is the easier option.
It's not that I have any issue with their friends, either. They're all very nice. In fact, they're more than nice, they're lifesavers. Because at least while they're around it stops my lot from scrapping. The very lowest point of the summer holiday will be when everyone else has gone away and there's "absolutely nothing to do".
In the face of such boredom, my children's reaction is not to go to the library, dig out a 1,000-piece jigsaw or swing aimlessly on a gate, but to poke each other. Poke, poke poke.
"Stop it." "But he poked me first." "I only poked him because he tripped me up." Oh please, please, please can I go back to work?
It was so different when they were tiny. We would set off for a picnic hand in hand and old ladies would smile at us because they were so cute. Now the suggestion of a picnic is greeted with a groan, and old ladies scowl because, even when they are behaving well, they seem to take up too much damn room.
Last summer was tough enough, but we'd just moved house so there was a novelty factor to everything we did. And of course, JK Rowling did her best to bail us all out, producing the final Harry Potter book just when tempers were starting to fray.
This year there is only Prince Caspian to look forward to, and, as it is out on Thursday, we're likely to have seen it and sampled the merchandise by July 1. The swag bag of summer toys (some chalk, felt pens, bubbles and sand) seems woefully inadequate to fill the gap, particularly since I broke out the chalk to ease a stand-off several days ago.
Since the prospect of the next seven weeks is threatening to overwhelm me, it seems sensible to treat it like any other insurmountable challenge: break it up into smaller, more manageable chunks.
To start with, there are the 10 days we will be on holiday in Italy. It's difficult not to have a good time when the sun is shining (and, in any case, once they've hooked up with other children, we won't see our own for dust). That leaves 39 days, of which I'll be working at least 10. Another 10 are made up of Saturdays and Sundays, when they would have been off anyway. And it's likely they'll spend another four or five on sleepovers.
That leaves around 15 days. Just 15 days to spend time with my fantastic, energetic, fun-loving boys? As I think I was saying, the summer holidays just aren't long enough.
The full article contains 1018 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
