Holidays, ha!

So you think teachers get the whole of the summer holidays on the beach with hot and cold running waiters bringing them margueritas all day long? Well, I can tell you its not true. I had to 'go into work' yesterday - now there's a phrase I haven't used in, oh, nearly ten years.

I had to drag the poor skunks along of course but they were reasonably well behaved once I stuck a screen in front of each of them - DS for him, Garfield 2 on DVD for her. I could have let them run around the school letting them sort out strategies for delaying getting to lessons and where to hide other people's stuff but the place is still a bit of a building site. Actually, it's a lot of a building site given that all the furniture and materials from the old site are arriving at the weekend and term starts in five weeks.

*My* classroom (hee hee!) is still empty, although Pickle was very impressed that there is a little room to the side with a sink in it, 'You've got a sink, Mummy!' The toilets are still being renovated to replace the full sized bogs with little ones for the pint-sized pupils on my corridor but they're 'waiting for parts' so there's a lovely line-up of porcelain in the hallway and some nasty looking holes in the floor in the bathrooms.

They're 'waiting for parts' to finish the reception area as well so when the prospective family I was meeting with arrived they were greeted with a masterclass in breeze-block walling and a crash course in building-materials dodging. No, it wasn't really that bad, I am just very cynical in my old age after years of run-ins with teeth-sucking workmen either shaking their heads in defeat at the size of the task or faithfully assuring me it would all be done in a week then disappearing for a couple of months.

Still, the family were really nice and very understanding about the enormous undertaking of simultaneously moving a school and adding three year groups and I was introduced to the cutest little girl, bright as a button but too shy to utter a word to me. We made a jigsaw and read some books while all the adults discussed the grown-up business and then I decided to throw her in the deep end with the ultimate test - I took her to meet my kids.

And an extraordinary thing happened. My children were even more shy with her! I couldn't drag more than a mumbled 'hello' out of them. I wonder if she knows the power she has, or how much I'd like to borrow her to get an occasional break in the noise round at my place? Later, Pickle told me 'She was really, really cute Mummy, but I didn't fancy her.' Hmm, I am the tiniest bit suspicious about that.

Once she'd gone normal service resumed, of course; fighting, arguing, wrestling, pinching etc. All taking place, I might add, in the Prinicpal's make-shift office. It also included some particulalry lairy behaviour from my boy who decided to demonstrate to my new boss, his new headmaster, his turbo-powered super-speed running, which consists of sticking out his little bottom, farting loudly then sprinting away.

Class.

I have never been more ready for a holiday in my life. Luckily we leave on Saturday for two weeks of all-inclusive fun at a resort hotel in Turkey, with hot and cold running kids clubs and hopefully a good line in margueritas.

Bring it on.