Dolly's blog: The long hot summer

“School's out and with an enormous exhalation of relief we bid adios to our au pair.  Having belatedly realised that she'd been liberally helping herself to my beloved Kerastase supplies (right up there with wearing my pants so far as I'm concerned) I'd been reduced to hiding my hair products in the wardrobe.  Life now seems less constrained.

The downside of course is that we're now staring down the barrel of seven weeks' summer holiday with no childcare.   I've heard this annual insanity has something to do with harvests - and in the nursery/nanny years I didn’t really give it much thought.  But in our post-nanny reality it now looms large on my mental list of working mother challenges. 

For week one Mr Dolly and I went for the "I'll take some holiday now, you take some later" approach, so the kids and I have just had a glorious week on the Kent coast.  It was brilliant; bucket and spade beaches, barbeques in the garden, seagulls and stately homes – truly I was living the Boden catalogue dream.

That was until my son pulled the old "leave the bathroom tap running" stunt and flooded the house top to bottom. I should have kept calm and thought "What would Sarah Beeny do?"  Instead I tore about like my hair was on fire, frantically gathering up every last saucepan whilst wailing (yes - actually wailing) like a woman possessed. Not cool.

As the carpets slowly dry out and I await the builders' quote for a new bedroom ceiling, I'm now back at Dolly Towers and an eerie silence prevails.  In my subconscious I too still have another six sunny weeks’ of holiday to go, but the cruel reality is that I'm now back at work, the kids have been packed off to their grandparents for a fortnight and I'm no longer feeling very Boden.

Sitting down for Sunday lunch à deux, my husband and I regarded one another somewhat nervously across the kitchen table, conversation no longer driven by the usual admonitions about good manners and why vegetables are not the devil’s work.  This must be what it's like when they leave home...”

Dolly is an employment lawyer and partner in a London firm. Currently working four days a week, theoretically between the hours of 9 and 5.  She is also a full time wife and mother of three lovely children aged three to seven, and a devoted dog owner.