Love the holidays!

Sunday evening of the holidays - is there a more sweeter time?! Usually I'm in a grumpy unmarked-book and unfulfilled-weekend kind of mood, but for the first time since the third week of August (um yes, I was working half term week, more fool me) Sunday evening is here and I feel burden-free. Lounging around in the bath just now, getting ready to go out (ha ha! - no school nights for two weeks!) I was thinking about how much I love the holidays if only for the most mundane of reasons:

• I got up to date with all my washing. I hadn't had time to do my washing for so long that I'd forgotten quite how to operate the washing machine, but once that distant memory was restored the machine was in action from sunrise to sunset. I know it sounds odd - it's not like we have to go scrub our smalls at the cold river's edge any more - but the sorting and loading and unloading takes up precious weekend time that I just haven't had. Or I've just been too lazy. Now for two weeks my laundry basket will not overflow, and I will always have something clean in my wardrobe. Happy days.
• I slobbed around and read the papers without feeling guilty and annoyed with myself because I should be marking instead.
• I watched a load of TV programmes I'd Sky-plussed and which had been waiting on the hard drive since about October.

And although my cold is still rampaging through my body, I'm trying very hard to ignore it and not let it spoil this Christmas like it did last year.