School holidaze

Other people have mongrel children, not me. My children will behave like angels throughout the long holidays, while I tut-tut at the whining monsters of my neighbours.

DAY ONE

Children with brushed hair happily eating five course dinner. Happy Mother

DAY TWO

Ten hours of Monopoly. In pyjamas until 4pm.

DAY THREE

Five hours at Build A Bear Workshop

DAY FOUR

Seven hours of Lego

DAY FIVE

Don’t hit your sister

DAY SIX

Don’t hit your sister

DAY SEVEN

Baked beans are fine for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Don’t back chat your mother

DAY EIGHT

Stop farting at the table

DAY NINE

“This family have taken a vow of silence.”
Don’t hit your sister

DAY TEN

“Shut up we are supposed to be having a spiritual experience!”

“Don’t hit your sister”

DAY ELEVEN

“Eat your frozen peas”

DAY TWELVE

“Your grandmother would really love it if you went to her house for lunch, then dinner, then breakfast. Sorry I can’t come I have to alphabetise my recipe books.”

“Mum you’ve never used a cookbook.”

DAY TWENTY THREE

“Kids we have run out of money. You will have to get a job.”

“But I’m only nine.”

“100 years ago I could have sent you down a coal mine to support me.”

DAY THIRTY THREE

Mother sitting on couch chewing finger nails down to the knuckle, tearing split ends out and other I-am-at-a fashionable-day-spa behaviour. Television explodes, so mother reads gossip magazines stolen from neighbours’ recycling bins. Happy, happy, most mags were new. Kids locked out in garden, can barely hear their fighting.