Rosie's blog: Ready for the holidays

I have been looking forward to the summer holidays for simply ages. As term-fatigue reaches its peak, the prospect of a six-week holiday seems like bliss. The City is warm and close, the formalities of dress have been forgotten and we think about summer with a mingled sense of expectation and inertia.

Except, of course, I will be working for all but one week of this period. The dates for my sons’ annual two-week holiday with their father have been written on the kitchen blackboard for ages; therefore the dates (some 20 days) when “plans” to facilitate my working pattern are required have been known for some considerable time. Fortunately, the boys are attending a science workshop on one day which I was quite pleased about when I booked it back in May. Unfortunately, this is the first and last item in the diary (other than our week away) until September. There were rumours of a tennis course but this clashed with the science.

I am not panicking as this doesn’t get the job done. Much as I relish the long, lazy summers of my childhood and the same sense of sunny endless afternoons for my own children, the fact is that my parents didn’t try to “create” something for my siblings and me, we were just content to play outside, with relative freedom and whoever happened to be there. So this explains my lackadaisical attitude to planning for the holidays, yet something must be done, of course.

Normally, at work, last minuteism is to be avoided, yet I acknowledge that the children’s plans for summer will be exactly that. I am also deluded enough to imagine that no single day will be completely ruined by rain; no-one will be upset; bored or spending hours looking for the latest craze on You Tube; or insisting that they be taken somewhere, preferably quite far away, for an event that has been fully booked up since last September. The treats of visits in my planned time off will be met with eagerness and a spritely attitude to learning the rich and varied history of our country. Family activities will be end-to-end fun and no-one will scrape their knee or fall off something. Holiday homework tasks will be done each morning as a matter of course. The packed lunches will contain only the correct and most appetising foods. We will always find a parking space. Queues will be remarkably short. The laundry will do itself. Fizzy drinks will not be requested. The list goes on.

Day dreaming aside, truly we are blessed with a most amazing nanny who has taken the planning of a couple of day trips within her stride. She has also been active in taking the boys swimming every day so at least they will carry on their aquatic adventures.

As always, the transience of this time looms large. There is a desire to squeeze every last drop of the charms of the boys’ childhood into some wonderful memories for them. I smile at their excitement and expectation of this lovely long holiday. Let’s hope they look back upon it and do the same.

Rosie is a partner in a City law firm with two sons aged 12 and 10. She is a single parent and works at her office in the City and at home