Christmas is a great time to be at home. It is a brief excitable holiday during which home is the best place to be. It is distinctly different to summer in this respect. And it's not just about the presents. I loathe receiving presents because I find it awkward and embarrassing and am poor at showing genuine gratitude and then people think I don’t like something and I spend a good while protesting how fond I really am. Indeed this year, preempting my parent’s pop-quizzing on what I’d like I proudly told my parents I would like a new watch and an MP3 player. This suggestion clearly fell on deaf ears though as a few weeks later they asked me what I’d like and I felt all my efforts had been in vain. This Christmas will be the first in eight years where I eat turkey rather than nut loaf, a prospect I am worryingly giddy with excitement about. It will also be the first time I’ve seen my grandparents in a year. And I’ve decided I’m not even going to work this Christmas (two years ago I worked 4hrs on Christmas day, which made for a worse day than the year before when I had glandular fever.) So I will be a lady of leisure absorbing family time, catching up with my home friends and crossing my toes praying for snow. Depressingly Easter becomes a time for revising, hibernating in a hole of self pity and worry. There is little fun to be had. The festival itself isn’t really terribly exciting (unlike Christmas) and the weather is less reliable (unlike a foreign summer.) Easter involves time tabling essays, revision and exam panic. It is functionally void of any fun. Summer holidays however spell liberation. For the last three years I've had a determined aversion to spending my summer at home. Like my dedication to Christmas being at home family time, the summer is the polar opposite. I refuse to work in Leicester, in a pub or factory for an entire summer, and if I’m going to do the same thing everyday for three months it might as well be something I enjoy and out in the sunshine. Summer holidays are a privileged time which correlate nicely to the idea that “the youth is wasted on the young.” When in education, you are allowed extensive weeks off in the summer (Christmas is a mere 3 weeks!). This year, summer was over three months. As soon as I graduate and embark on my “career” this free time will be clocked to a mere four to five weeks a year (about the duration of the average University Easter break). After my A-levels I spent six weeks working for an adventure holiday company in Northern France. The staff and the kids were English and ordering a beer is an easily acquired linguistic talent. Last year I worked in France where the customers perceived us all personally responsible for the constant rain; clearly assuming we reps found a summer living in a tent in the rain a small blink off idyllic. It is quite ironic that I’ve become involved in kids repping. As a child we went camping in France and made a concentrated effort to sap the locality dry of all possible sites of interest. We did not go to Funstation, Hoopi’ Club nor indeed the Bugs Bunny Club. Kids club was never entertained. This is mainly, I would suggest, because we went on holiday as a family, to spend time as a family. Camping is the most intense of these holidaying experiences, but arguments included, I loved it immensely. This year I worked for three months in the Costa del Sol in the impressive magnitude of a four star all-inclusive hotel. We looked after 3-8yr olds and 9-15 year olds for 9 hours a day. The activities on offer were mixed and varied: themed jungle, pirate and medieval sessions for the little ones and circus skills, raft building and egg drops with the older ones (and basketball for every age… yes including the 3yr olds!) we did them over and over. The interesting bit was the kids. I have learnt more about kiddie-sprinkles then I would hazard to say the average expectant newly weds know: few kids say please or thank you, three year olds don’t know or respond to their name and cannot comprehend that being left at kids club means mum will be back in 1 ½ hours, nothing is inevitable when you are just out of nappies and small children are easy to entertain, demand a lot of your time all of the time and are prone to weeping and whining. Particularly when one of their mini friends decides its time for a cry too. Seven year olds all think that they are older than they are whilst nine year olds can be remarkably small and irritating. Teenagers are everything you pretend you weren’t: lippy, disrespectful and oversized. These are not complaints, merely contraceptive observations which make me sure everyone should endure a spot of childcare prior to planning their own future. Plus, at the end of the day, most of them are a really good giggle. Whether you are laughing with them, or in a “how cute is that?” way, laughing at them! Costa del Sol itself is everything as nauseating as I’d expect. But it also has beautiful countryside, pretty towns and showbiz ports. And there is Gibraltar to visit which is peculiar in everyway, not least that they speak Spanglish! And Morocco too which is a gentle tourist introduction to Africa. As with any job there were times when I was low but as an entity I loved this summer, as with the last two, for all its experiences. I have done things I have never done before, lived places I have never even visited before and been with new people and a lot of sunshine and Sangria. Christmas is a special time for being at home, as the summer is a time for being away from it. I enjoy them both lots and for different reasons and wish you the best of both for all your in-between term times. Kate | 
