It’s my first experience of school holidays as a parent and I’m realising, for the first time, how hard it is. I should have known that this was going to happen, time being linear and all that, but I don’t think I’d ever realised just how much time a summer break actually lasts.
We’ve signed my son up for one of those local summer workshop things that mostly exist to enable working parents to stay employed, but cost so much that you basically end up working for free for its duration. This one has a musical element, for which he and his classmates will rehearse Maybe from Annie (to my mind the finest song in which an orphaned child theorises on the social class of their biological parents).
The staff are excellent and seem invested in creating a full-spectrum experience for my son, since he comes home each day having made a rice crispy cake, muffin, or gingerbread man.
I’ve no idea what my dad did to keep us entertained during the summer when we were kids. Northern Irish schools take July and August off, and in the Republic of Ireland secondary schoolers get June off, too. I’ve been told this elongated holiday dates from the days when teens were expected to suspend their studies to help with summertime farm work, but I’ve never had this urban (rural?) myth confirmed.
My dad didn’t set us to ploughing, or enlist the help of a vaguely musical theatre-themed summer club to fill this void. I think he might have just thrown us a double pack of sliced ham and driven off to work. We grew up surrounded by countryside, so it would be nice to tell you that I spent my days gambolling through fields, picking floral bunches, perhaps conveying an easel to a pasture for some live watercolours.
I did none of these things.
Instead, my days began by watching The Big Breakfast at 7am, and my eyes remained fixed on the TV until Neighbours came on around lunchtime. Thereafter, we would raid my dad’s 700+ strong collection of films taped off the telly, looking for those we’d not yet seen. Often these were two to a tape, and after a strange afternoon viewing of, say, Robocop back-to-back with A Woman’s Heart: Live From RTE, my little brother and I would play football up against the garage until we broke something. This was, inevitably, seconds before my dad’s car pulled in from work so he could shout at us, and maybe threaten to apportion us less ham for the following day.
When I pick my son up, he seems to have had a lovely time, but I lament that he will never experience the unsupervised joys of my childhood. He’s a city boy, and as much as I envy his access to public transport and interactions with people to whom he’s unrelated, he’ll never know the true horror of being forced to make your own fun in the pure, proving fire of rural boredom. Poor thing, I think. He’ll have to content himself with show tunes and gingerbread men.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
