Anyone else had a rubbish school holidays?

[Blueybanditbingochilli]

Namely because of:

1. The fucking WEATHER. No doubt I will be piled on telling me to buy puddle suits and ‘crack on’ but it’s been absolutely miserable and I will not hear otherwise. We haven’t been abroad, we don’t have nearby family to visit and we don’t have good inexpensive indoor local attractions so every rainy day (which has genuinely been most days) has been SHIT and we have gone out of our minds with boredom.
2. The age of my children (5 and 17 months), an ENDLESS treadmill of toilet visits, nappy changes, meals, naps, drinks before doing the lot again. They can’t be left alone together as they fight and wind each other up so to even go for a piss I have to strap the youngest, screaming, into his pram while the oldest desperately tries to get to him to cause more havoc.
3. My youngest has been ill on and off after starting nursery all summer with croup, ear infections, whooping cough and HFM, so on top of the rainy days we have also spent ‘ill’ days sat bored out of our skulls in the living room which I swear one day will be the purgatory I spend my afterlife in.

Not interested in smug stories about puddle suits, impeccably behaved children with fabulous immune systems or those who ‘love the cooler weather’. This is a rant thread for those who can relate to my position and nothing more. Roll on school!

Erm... that's illegal and they can't do that - they needed to let him take them or pay him

Yeah I have. My mum died unexpectedly at the very beginning of the school holiday. We had lots of plans together with my very small children, who she adored beyond all measure, and they her.

Their summer holiday has been just awful, no holiday, hardly any days out, nothing fun, just a big shadow cast by what happened, lots of grief and a funeral. It’s been really, really hard.

So sorry to everyone else who has lost someone they love. It's so shit

It's been fairly shit here in Cornwall

So the fuck what if I, or other people ,like cooler weather ... doesn't help you if you don't and have had a shit time.

I think generally summer holidays are less good than one expects/imagines.

@ladygindiva and shit here too in Bath- - that's why I was baffled at someone who said they were in SW and it had been good- maybe my perception of good isn't there's

@Blueybanditbingochilli
DD1 was just like your daughter - curious - and the advantage is the questioning turned into constant reading by the time she was 6 and life was so easy from then.
But for now I give you this.

I'm in Cumbria. The weather has been truly shit. I've even had the heating on at times.

My 11 year old just wants to game and not do anything. I have got him out every day but my word it has been a battle. He's too old for soft play etc and indoor activities around here are limited. My DD is happy pottering about and is generally happy but even she has had her moments.

We had Covid a couple of weeks ago and had to cancel a visit to family as a result. Can't afford to go abroad. I'm seriously fed up.

The thing I am finding weird about this summer is the assumption that everyone has been off for six weeks.

Everyone is saying did you have a good summer etc.

I just worked as normal and had a week off! The weather was great the week I was off, possibly a bit too hot.

It seems to be a particular "thing" this summer.

Other than school staff, who are all these people who get six weeks off? I have a colleague who takes the summer off, but it's very much the exception where I am.

I'd much rather have cooler weather.

No but of course piping up when people are clearly struggling to say you’re delighted you have the crap weather you want 100% of the time rather than the usual 90% will make you a bit insufferable and people will probably react to that.

I’m in the SW. This is today, and what a minimum of 70% of the summer has been like - about 19 degrees, windy, with intermittent rain. The blue and sun will come out for an hour, during which time you scramble to get the kids into their shoes and off to the park, when you get there it returns to being like this and you get rained on. The local park is a bog and at one point I counted 12 days in a row of rain.

I’m not saying other posters are lying or misremembering but I think it’s astonishing that other people have had long, hot and apparently lovely summers a mere 90 minute drive from here.

And, to continue my complaint, we also had an ‘unusually wet’ spring so it has literally been raining pretty much all YEAR and it is now September with no sign of a dry spell.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-68666843.amp

Precisely!

Hope autumn is a bit better for you.

@Blueybanditbingochilli yep ! I did go away 16 th July to 26th- so unless it was amazing then- only consistently good week I can remember was end of June around Glastonbury

Terrible! Spent around £1500 on holiday clubs as we both work full time, kids enjoyed those but was still a rush getting them there, right clothes, packed lunch etc. We had 2 weeks off imagining low key “chilled” days at home or going out to places nearby, kids behaviour was just awful and they just wanted to watch TV and eat junk food. Weather was shit for most of the time in south east, had maybe ten nice days- had the paddling pool up 3 x at start of hols when it was really hot.

This thread has me questioning if I understand how weather works. I live SW and have seen people from neighbouring counties say they have had horrid weather and lovely weather. We have had nice weather, as in sun cream on the children, needing to water the allotment most of the time. I had no idea that there was such variation even 50 miles away that they could have had a rainy summer.

@Pavolvaa What chn want to do and what you allow are two different things .