`The Gaeltacht for three weeks is sheer bliss'

The summer is nearly upon us. You can approach it in many ways but I think that after spending the school year charging around like a lunatic, delivering the children to football, swimming, music, dancing, judo, parties, slumbers, you should choose their activities thinking solely of yourself. So with this in mind I have put together a few ideas.

Our local GAA club runs a wonderful summer course - £10 a week. Each week is complete and in fact you should only enrol them for one week but last year I managed to get Aoife in for the entire three weeks by using a different Christian name for each enrolment. She got T-shirts, caps, and loads of instructions on how to face the ball, kick the ball and avoid the ball. It was immaterial to me that she doesn't play Gaelic - I got rid of the pest and was able to go back to bed each morning until 11, sail around the shops without her nagging me to buy everything around us and collect her at 4 p. m. when she would be at the point of exhaustion. It was the best £30 investment I ever made.

Of course the Gaeltacht for three weeks is sheer bliss. The secret here is to go AWOL for the first week the child goes off. That's the time when they are homesick and miserable. By the second week they are grand and by the third they don't want to come home at all.

It's a good idea to get your child a few lessons in the tin whistle or fiddle, then you can park them at a traditional music summer school. They rarely take beginners but a couple of tunes will get them accepted and then you are free again. Situated generally in areas like Clare and Sligo, sessions in the pubs usually begin at 11 a. m., so you can get yourself ensconced and quaff pints for the day. And, of course, this is an investment for the future. They can busk for pocket money, and once you have a musician in the family you can be guaranteed a seat at the session, so you will have a great social life for the old age.

Another option is to encourage overnights with the friends. It gets even better when they are invited down to the cottage/mobile/ granny's place in Wexford/ Kerry/Donegal. And needless to say when it comes to your turn to have them back always have the excuse on the tip of your tongue. "Oh dear, if only our cousins from America weren't coming . . ."

So there you are. I hope we get long balmy days so that you can lie in the deck chair, sip the wine and read all the pulp fiction. And, for now, just forget about September and the next academic year.