A new pencil case and a new start

IF EARLY September has a smell, for me it would be Vosene shampoo and if it was an object, it would be a protractor. I have used neither of these since leaving school.

But thoughts of academia were everywhere today as I wandered around Penarth. WHSmith had some offer on pencil cases; Sainsbury’s displayed posters screaming ‘back to school’; ‘Ogam Igam’ had a big sale banner splayed across the window and hair appointments have been booked for my son in ‘Blades’ and my daughter in ‘Bluu’ in preparation for the start of a new year.

I believe the long summer holiday has its origins in our agricultural past and the need for children to help with the harvest. My children’s idea of helping in the fields is flinging some mud at each other in Granda’s allotment; picking strawberries and playing in hay bales at Hendrewennol or spending half an hour picking blackberries, eating as many as end up in the washed out old ice cream tub.

But the summer has been a chance for family time, a phrase that can conjure cringe-worthy forced family fun that is anything other, with sulky kids and even sulkier parents.

But thankfully, this summer, my children have been very fortunate with fun excursions to Hadrian’s Wall; the Eden Project; an air museum; Aquarium and a boat trip in the Bay, visiting family at different ends of the country, some delicious meals out, a camping trip and a holiday to Italy.

I’m not convinced my children would note the irony that this was originally a time of children working and mine have done little but jolly about. Still, for all of us, it has been a time to relax, to laugh, to chat and at the risk of making anyone cringe, to reconnect.

I hope that in years to come they will look back on summer holidays as a time of joy, but also realise how fortunate they are, fortunate not to be working and fortunate to be experiencing and enjoying that most precious of all things, life.

Whilst the primary purpose may now be redundant, this hiatus in the middle of the year, punctuates perfectly. It is a bold full stop before the capital letter and onwards with the next paragraph.

I won’t even begin to eulogise the dying embers of summer days, as a hazy sun dips into the sea, bowing out to a balmy early autumn, because we all know that frankly August has been rubbish. The sun packed its bags and flew out of Cardiff airport weeks ago.

But it is a shift from the end of one term, into an opportunity to rest and reflect before starting afresh with renewed vigour. A time to appreciate all that we have, renew determination to work hard and be our very best.

So onwards and upwards, with clean hair and a jazzy new pencil case, in which we can keep all the tools we need to write a wonderful new chapter.