OH how I love the summer holidays, with their long, dull days, predictable rain of apocalyptic proportions and kids whining about being bored, said no parent ever.
One week in and we've already gone crazy, each of us individually and then two at a time. Will this ever end? I've begun a diary in an effort to record what I must endure.
Summer Holidays – Day One
Already weary and parents gathered at the school gates. Some already had crazed looks in their eyes. The reality of our situation has begun to sink in.
School is over. It's closed. Our hopes were raised by movement in one of the classrooms.
We decided among ourselves that we would offer the teacher a substantial amount of money to open the classroom in the summer.
We screamed and waved through the bars of the gate and caught his attention. He shouted out the window that he wasn't a teacher, but a pest control officer.
He wouldn't accept money and our hopes were dashed. We stood at the locked school gates and sobbed.
Thankfully the torrential rain that has been falling for two weeks and looks set to continue until September hid our tears. We hugged, wished each other well and went home to our perpetually bored and hungry children. All hope is indeed lost.
Day Two
The children have taken to sitting by the patio doors looking gloomily out into the rain-soaked garden and complaining about the weather, as well as intermittent declarations of boredom. There was a flurry of excitement when a cat waded past, his furry legs barely visible beneath the brown, muddy water that was beginning to turn into a swimming pool at the back door. The five-year-old threw her pink bucket and spade in the bin with a dramatic flourish, announcing she wouldn't be needing them in "stupid Ireland". Barra Best later said on the weather news that the rain would continue but that we would be getting 'warmer rain'. This news did nothing to improve the mood of the troops.
Day Three
The children have taken to eating all the rations at once and fighting each other in wrestling-style matches on the living-room rug. The dog escaped from the back garden and ran down the road – I presume he had had enough of the constant bickering and bored faces and longed for a life of peace and quiet. I almost joined him in his dash for freedom. He came back when he was hungry and shook himself all over the just mopped kitchen floor. The children laughed for the first time in days, then quickly went back to being miserable, hungry and bored.
Day Four
A strange yellow disc emanating heat and light appeared in the sky today. No-one was quite sure what it was. An hour passed and no aliens had declared they were going to dominate our race and take control of our world so we ventured out and headed for Donegal, hoping the EU border checkpoints hadn't yet been erected to compound our misery.
When we arrived at the beach, rain of biblical proportions began bouncing off the sand dunes and a wind that meteoroligists might describe as gale force made the beach look like a scene from a Hollywood apocalypse-themed movie.
The man of the house, stoic in his determination that the trip was not going to be a waste of time, took orders and was dispatched to an ice cream van, where he was served cones by a man who shook his hand and congratulated him for being brave and mad enough to come to the beach on such a day.
We ate ice cream in the humid car, looking out at rain-sodden, miserable farm animals until the steam from the husband's saturated clothes steamed up the windows. He wished to put it on record that the rain wasn't warmer – it was in fact, to steal a phrase from Guns 'n' Roses, like November Rain.
Day Five
It has been raining for 12 hours now. The street has a river flowing through it. The bad weather has affected the TV signal, our last remaining contact with the outside world. We sit around staring at the 'you have lost satellite connection' error screen for hours, hoping it will come back on. We have abandoned all hope. Send help. And a St Bernard Rescue Dog with a bottle of white wine and a packet of kettle crisps – the cheese and onion ones.
