That moment every mum longs for.

 

THAT MOMENT EVERY

 MUM LONGS FOR

IT’S back to the classroom next week - much to the relief of thousands of local mums, who by now will no doubt be sick of the sight of their offspring. 

You can always tell when school’s out for summer. You can drive to work in half the time, the morning paper never arrives before you go to work and you get run over by skateboarders if you venture round the shops. 

The kitchen sink is always full, the fridge is half-empty and there’s no escape from Radio One. It’s also the only time of year when teachers go strangely quiet about their pay and conditions… 

But within a week I guarantee that households all over Britain will have echoed to the refrain: “Mum, I’m bored!”and before long special Back To School window displays start to appear in shops selling uniforms and stationery. 

Any parent will tell you that it’s all well and good having six weeks summer hols (and don’t they seem twice that long every year, m’duck?). 

But after the first fortnight (or less if they’ve been on the family’s annual holiday on the East Coast), mothers are tearing their hair out in large clumps, praying for the day their beloved brats go back!

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JUST GIVE ME A WEEK

TALKING of holidays, isn’t it about time this country abandoned this silly British Bank Holiday ritual (except Christmas and New Year) and just give everyone an extra week’s holiday per year to take when we please? 

This Monday traffic heading for the coast will once more grind to a halt as millions of mindless morons attempt to get to the seaside just in time to come home again. 

And then half of them will invent some pathetic excuse to skive off work on Tuesday so they can recover from the weekend’s exertions!

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WHERE THERE’S A WILL...

SOMETIMES I have the most irrational fears, like being a victim on Beadle’s About or being mistaken for Salman Rushdie in Harrods. 

I got very worried recently by some unsolicited junk mail trying to persuade me to make my last will and testament. Do they know something I didn’t?

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(This column was originally published in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph on Saturday, 29 August, 1992)