Happy holidays!

The news that the Department of Education has shortened this December holiday quite radically was hardly even a blip on my horizon. Not only because we’ve all been working so hard that we’ve barely been able to look up as the year blitzed past, but because I don’t need to think about it. For the first time in 14 years, my husband and I won’t have any schoolgoing kids in January.

It’s extraordinary. We’ve had a tiny taste of what it will be like over the past three months because Eighteen has been writing matric, so we’ve had to do the school run only on the days she actually wrote exams. It was weird: early morning suddenly became an actual period of time rather than a blur of lunchboxes and last-minute plans, a period of time where you could actually do something – you know, like people in movies do: yoga, cycle, walk, write a quick bestseller. Of course I did none of these things. I just sat there quietly worrying about the urgent thing I must obviously have forgotten.

We also don’t have to think about when we come back from holiday, which is an excellent thing because I think all of us (you too!) need a proper break this year. It’s been a tough one, what with The Gupta, the Bad and the Ugly, a new president, old corruption, international madness on an industrial scale… who doesn’t want to loll around under a tree for a bit and forget about it all?

So here’s to a couple of weeks of what keeps us all sane: the freedom of free time, the love of lovely people, good food, good friends and goodwill.

Happy holidays to us all! Be well, travel safely and see you on the other side. Merry Christmas! Love, Suzy