Not the united notions

`Sometimes I feel just like Kofi Annan," Eileen sighs in exasperation as she heaps spoonfuls of instant Colombian rich roast into her bone china mug. "I need a caffeine fix immediately after the session I've just had with Ciaran and Brian." Emphatic nods, sly grins and muffled yawns greet her outpourings. "They were at each other's throats all morning, making sniping comments across the classroom and disrupting everyone near them again and again. I'm so sick of it. I thought they'd calmed down after the big chat Seamus had with them last week, but something happened on the bus this morning and they're at it again."

An exhausted silence reigned, but we all waited for Eileen's Dahlesque twist in the tale. "I think I'll take a course day on Friday."

Eileen is always the first to crack during the post-Christmas bleakness. With smiling Santas a distant memory and Easter's bouncing bunnies mere ears on the horizon, her course days become extra precious. Invariably she takes one now and saves her other two for when "the kids go wild in June".

Social diarist Rita has an alternative approach. Her course days are consumed by extended golf weekends, catered bridge soirees and her annual lazy lunch and shopping spree with daughter Orla, who works in the IFSC. Aisling never tends to take her leave before February because she appears to be waiting in annual anticipation for Cormac, her partner, to whisk her away for a romantic Valentine's short break to somewhere like Barcelona or Budapest. Last year, they went to Buncrana.

Brigid is loath to use hers at all, as "you'd never know when you might need one for a family illness or even a funeral". Eamon rejects the entire concept and never does a course during the summer. "Why should I have to give five full days of my hard-earned holidays in July to do an oul' course in mumbo-jumbo, costing £30, to get three days off? It doesn't make sense." Maybe it doesn't as you try to photocopy 12 phonic work sheets, to occupy four hyperactive infants for 15 minutes, who want their teacher, while you simultaneously try to teach the joys of long division to your own bunch of 32 disinterested nine-year olds. You silently curse Rita, knowing she is lingering over coffee and chocolate cake in a Grafton Street eaterie.

But my days will come. My unspoken plans carry me beyond remainder 91. Now where did I put that calendar.