Here comes Summer

I remember being younger, much younger and finishing up the school year with a 5-6 week summer break. Summer holidays back then were great, the weather seemed better than it is now and, as kids, there was just so much fun to be had. The hols would normally entail:

1. Wake Up
2. Remember it's the school summer hols
3. Smile whilst chasing the flush (if you're a boy you'll know what that means)
4. Run downstairs
5. Grab toast
6. Run to a mate's house (with toast still in hand)
7. Wake him up
8. Eat more toast and watch one of: Charlie Brown, Why Don't You?, Scooby-doo, Littlest Hobo, The Raccoons (I could go on and on)
9. Figure out what to do as you only had six weeks although you're convinced last year you had more.
10. Play football, cricket, body surf, fish, video games (the commodore 128 back in those days of which only the c64 had games - why is that??)
11. Pop home, make sandwiches (usually tomato ketchup, yes just tomato ketchup)
12. Watch Neighbours (Kylie has never looked worse)- eat sandwiches
13. Then continue any of the previous activities until you're called in for dinner far too early which gets wolfed down so you can go out again until the sun goes down.
14. The next day - repeat as above.

This would only ever get interrupted by a serious irritation which was Sunday lunch with the family or the start of a test match which would involve playing cricket in the lounge whilst watching England lose to Courtney Walsh and Co.

Does life get any better than this??

Reluctantly, this now brings me to my studies, and now 20 odd years later we've also finished for the summer holidays. I say finished but that's not really the case, there's still lots of things to do - research, investigating plot irregularities (hmm), figuring out what works and what doesn't, tightening up the chapter outlines we did last week and a whole lot of reading on top of that.

Still, there's no deadlines for the next 5 weeks and that takes the regiment out of it for now which I'm grateful for, especially when I have a week in Ireland, a weekend in Alderney, the g/f's birthday, the sale of my flat and the move to a house all to look forward to in the coming weeks. Let's just hope the weather stays nice and I can add some beach, fishing, spearfishing and kayaking time to that list.

It's rubbish being an adult with adult responsibilities, but maybe just maybe, this Saturday morning I'll go wake someone with toast in hand, polystyrene surf board under arm, a 99p plastic football and some uselessly small cricket stumps and a dented cricket bat.

If only I could find that Commodore 128...

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