Summertime and the living definitely ain't easy

SURVIVING THE SUMMER / Caroline Murphy: You know what I think? I think that New Year's resolutions get made at the wrong time of the year. That's what I think. As far as I'm concerned, they belong in May, or even early June (though it must be very early June!) because it's in May and early June that the summer is still to come - still ahead with its endless, stretching, long days of opportunity.

This is the summer, I tell myself confidently and enthusiastically every time. This is the one that will be filled with trips, togetherness, relaxed family gatherings in the garden, fun-filled weekends in the tent, picnics, piano music drifting out through the open windows, daisy- chain-making and bird tables.

Yes that's the plan.

And it has been the plan for oh, at a guess, I'd say 15 years or thereabouts.

So how come, you may well wonder, my children probably can't tell a robin from a wren? And how come, year after year, we find September has come, the tent lies cold and folded in the corner of the shed, and the actual number of days when we were all at home, relaxed, with time available to be filled with fun-laden togetherness could be counted on one hand with no fingers? Well, because summers aren't what they used to be in my day.

These days, summers are military operations. They include Irish colleges, German colleges, Asgard trips, tennis camps, summer projects, sailing and soccer camps (not all of those for each child, I hasten to add - we have quite a few children).

We need a guard on point duty to check people in and out. We fill out an Excel spreadsheet at the beginning of the summer - if we can find the time - to chart out who is going to be where and when. Last summer, because of a family wedding which was on during a period when we had thought we would all be free, there was only one week in the entire summer when we could all go on holidays together. This year we are managing two - but barely.

Are we absolutely mad? Well probably. In fact, almost definitely, but we are not alone. There is just so much going on that no-one seems to have any time just to be.

I really wish it didn't have to be like this. For years, I harboured dreams that one of these days, as soon as the youngest was on two wheels and before the older ones were clamouring for four, we would all head off on a cycling holiday together. At this stage, although the dream is still somewhere there lurking in the background, I would settle happily for one or two of them heading off cycling with their friends even for a day.

But that is now the real problem with the summers. We all have such different schedules that the odd week of "downtime" and availability never matches with anyone else's. As one guy finishes a sailing course, his pal heads off for Irish college. As that comes to an end, someone else's family holiday is starting, and then it's someone else off to Irish college.

So I have a proposal. I want the Minister for Education (actually, any Minister) to step in and proclaim an obligatory fortnight of "Stay at home and be at home" time - for everybody. Yes, everybody - man, woman and child. He did it with the school year, now let's have him do it with the holidays.

Just think. A whole fortnight with everyone around and free at the same time. Think of how relaxed we would all be. Kids could play football or pitch and putt or go cycling together. Parents could potter around the garden. We might actually even get to see the garden instead of rushing through and past it all the time. We could introduce one or two of our offspring to the mysteries of weeding. We could even teach them to cook a thing or two!

Wouldn't it be great? A holiday without having to go on holiday. A voyage of discovery around our own homes and neighbourhoods. I tell you, if we could just organise the weather, there's a lot to be said for it.

I really think we should work on it. But meanwhile, the normal summer beckons. The Excel sheet is densely packed. The financial implications are devastating. And I am desperately wondering when, in the middle of it all, we will find time to climb through the rhododendrons on Howth Hill - a piece of my own past which, for some strange reason, I am desperate to pass on to them all.

It looks as though there is only one thing to do. We must just extend the summer. Let it be four months, not three. Then, finally, we might be able to find the time to smell the roses together.

• Surviving the Summer is a new weekly column that will run until everyone is safely back at school. Caroline Murphy is a broadcaster and mother of six.