Hooray for the holidays (From The Northern Echo)

Hooray for the holidays

1:27pm Friday 22nd July 2011 in Sharon's View By Sharon Griffiths

IT’S the start of the summer holiday.

Time to start neglecting your children. Not too much, of course, but a little healthy neglect could be just what they need.

Long gone are those idyllic, free range Famous Five days when you could turf your kids out of the house at the end of July and call them in six weeks later to remind yourself who they were in time to get their hair cut and buy the school shoes.

Now holiday childcare can be a nightmare and many a working parent has blessed grandparents, swimming courses, football courses, activity weeks, and anything that keeps children busy, supervised and safe.

So, sadly, today’s children will never start the first day of the school holidays looking forward to six whole weeks of freedom stretching lazily out in front of them. Freedom’s the last thing they’ll get. Much too risky.

But we can cut them a little slack.

We don’t have to be quite so paranoid.

Encourage common sense and with friends with like-minded parents, they can be let off the leash occasionally, possibly more often than we give them credit for.

At 14 I went to Austria by myself – a thousand miles, 24 hours, lots of trains and a ferry, though my luggage went in advance and I think my parents gave me the taxi fare across London – and I was definitely no brighter or more sensible than your average modern 14-year-old. Your children can do a lot more than you think – especially if you give them the chance.

One of the kindest things you can do – though they might not appreciate it just now – is to let them be bored.

Boredom is good. Coping with boredom is better. Learning to entertain yourself, rather than sitting there like a great overgrown toddler waiting for someone else to decide what you’ll do with your day, is a huge breakthrough.

True, there’s a risk that they might start a fire on the kitchen table, just to see what happens. But there’s a better chance that they might learn to think for themselves and take control of their day. It’s called growing up.

So yes, call in favours, plead with the grandparents, fix up as many holiday activities as you can afford in time and money.

But sometimes, quite often in fact, don’t be afraid to let your children be bored. They will learn one of life’s great lessons.

And while they’re doing that, you can get on with your own life. For a while at least.

SO the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are off to Balmoral, above, for a long weekend as the Queen would like to get to know her grandson’s new bride.

Princess Diana famously loathed Balmoral. The Blairs found it so scary that Cherie got pregnant.

It all sounds very hearty and organised and outdoorsy and frightfully formal. True, they have barbecues, but not, I think as we know them...

Kate will, no doubt, be eager to please and totally charm William’s grandparents. But if he’s got any sense, the next available weekend he should take her to somewhere hot and sunny where formal dress means keeping your bikini top on.

WELL, would you have told the world that you’d won £161m? Of course you wouldn’t.

You had to bless the innocence of Colin and Chris Weir when they sat beaming with delight over the money that they said wasn’t going to change their lives.

A likely tale.

Within hours the sacks full of mail were landing on their doorstep and they’ve fled the country to escape the begging letters. They say that it would be impossible to hide that amount of money and news would bound to come out sooner or later.

No it wouldn’t. They could have said they’d won a couple of million, which would be enough to justify a lot of spending, without sending the beggars into overdrive. Meanwhile they could spend the money, salt it away, put it in a trust or have a wonderful time giving most of it away – and still be many million times richer than the rest of us.

With one or two dramatic exceptions, most new multi-millionaires manage to live fairly quiet lives and we don’t even know about them But now we certainly know about Chris and Colin.

No thanks, Sir Alan...

SO maybe it pays to be nice after all. Just look at Tom Pellereau, winner of The Apprentice. Maybe it really was the chair he invented, or the curvy nail file thingy. Or maybe it was the way he never said anything nasty and shared the credit and remembered to open doors for people and smiled a lot.

Or maybe it was the way he just sort of kept blinking behind his specs that made it so hard for Lord Sugar to be cross with him After all, Lord S is going to have to work with the Apprentice winner, and how much more pleasant to work with someone who’s nice.

The horrible thing about The Apprentice is that all the candidates, by the very nature of the show, are so full of themselves, so objectionable and pushy and putting the others down that it’s pretty unpleasant really.

Would you want to work with someone like that? No, of course not.

Which is why most of us wouldn’t want to work with Lord Sugar....

What a hero! What a wife!

WENDI Deng in her pink jacket, dark hair flying, moved faster than a speeding bullet to protect husband Rupert Murdoch this week when a loony attacked him with a face full of shaving foam at a parliamentary hearing.

Before then she’d sat behind him, stroked his shoulder and his back, calmed him down, gently stopped him banging the table like an angry old man.

Then – pow! – when the so-called comedian struck, she struck back sharpish. What reflexes.

Maybe the Met should take her on the staff right now. They need all the help they can get.

For if they can’t stop a clown with a custard pie getting into a hearing in the heart of Westminster, then what hope for Olympics security?

Give yourself a break

MUMS spend ten hours a day on household chores, according to a survey by a mobile phone company.

Ten hours? Really?

Unless you have quads under the age of four what do they find to do?

They must be looking for work. And they’d certainly have been doing my share.

According to the survey they spend more than an hour each day washing clothes – so no washing machines presumably, unless they stand there looking at them. They also say they spend nearly an hour helping with homework and more than an hour cooking. Well most of us managed those simultaneously – a quick check on fractions or Hitler’s rise to power while knocking up a shepherd’s pie – also while listening to violin practice and The Archers.

So that’s at least an hour saved.

Mothers also said more than an hour a day tidying up after their children.

Well you know the answer to that one – teach the children to tidy up after themselves. Then you can sit down with a nice glass of wine...

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
FERN Britton probably got her tattoos to celebrate her new flat tummy or maybe to show she doesn’t feel her age.

When my sister was 40 she had a tattoo of a rose done on her shoulder. It’s very small and tasteful and only shows when she’s wearing a low-backed dress.

I would have liked a tattoo myself but was too nervous (can’t stand needles, not even acupuncture).

Instead for my 50th birthday I had really bright pink highlights put into my hair. They only lasted a few weeks, but I loved seeing people’s reactions.

A tattoo doesn’t hurt anyone else so what’s the harm?

Lindsay Andrews, by e mail