A long, wet Tuesday afternoon in August. My three children have been blissfully quiet for hours - so quiet that I've been able to think and work without a break.
Twenty minutes ago, Raphael, eight, crept downstairs and whispered to me that he wanted to cut up some cubes of cheddar and stick them on cocktail sticks. "Sure," I muttered without really looking up from my screen. "Careful with the knife." Now, music wails and judders from the crackly old Early Learning Centre cassette player up in the playroom - Abba, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Batman by Prince.
When I finally poke my head round the door, hot bordello darkness greets me. Toy boxes have been stacked to create a kind of dance floor, in the middle of which, beneath the harsh spotlight of an Anglepoise, a penguin and a gorilla hold hands stiffly as Prince rasps his pelvic lyrics. Behind them, an Alsatian with a bored expression sits on an upturned yellow plastic Lego bucket, three mini cans of Coca-Cola arranged in front of him. Bumford, his teddy bear sidekick, flops forlornly in front of the hacked-up cheese.
"Shh, it's a cuddly toy disco!" the children hiss, frowning at me from the greenish gloom. "Go away, mummy."
"Bumford's not going to get his eye poked out with a cocktail stick, is he?"
"No!" they shriek, intensely excited by the mere suggestion.
"I hope the animals aren't getting drunk."
More shrieks. "They are! They are! And they're sexing!"
I close the door. I don't need to hear any more. At least someone's having a wild time on this damp Tuesday afternoon. It seems to me that this is the best sort of game - unsupervised by adults, not bought or got from a box, unbreakable, highly charged, funny, slightly naughty, meticulously and deliciously imaginative.
This summer holiday is our first without any paid childcare whatsoever. We're lucky. Though my partner and I work hard, our work is flexible and we do it from home. Our children have finally reached ages - 11, nine and eight - when constant supervision isn't necessary. As long as someone is in the house - to feed, administer First Aid, sort out rows - we can let them get on with it.
My friend Katie was unnerved when I told her the plan: "But what ... no outings?"
"We've been on holiday," I said, "Now they can play."
She looked at me as if "play" meant burying your kids up to the neck in sand. "What will they do all day?"
"Play," I said again. "Hang out."
"But what about stimulation? Exercise?"
"We walk the dog on the common," I told her, but you could see that she didn't like it. You could see that she thought we were failing our children in some vital, terrible way. Her four (even the youngest, who is barely five) all do courses. Violin, judo, pottery, tap-dancing, pond-dipping. The rest of the time, they're strapped into the Peugeot (French song tape playing, of course), since the courses are all some distance from each other and finish at different times. Last week when she called in for tea having collected all but the last child, she admitted she was exhausted. "I'll be glad when the holidays are over," she sighed, "Still, at least they're not bored."
I don't get it. I love the holidays precisely because there's nothing to do. As my three chuck their ratty grey uniforms in the laundry basket at the end of term, you can almost see their little bodies sigh and relax. No more schedules or structure. What are today's parents so scared of? Why do they feel that they are failing their kids if they don't provide them with a minute-by-minute, fun-packed itinerary? What's wrong with not knowing what's going to happen next? Don't the best fun and games come about when you just let time go baggy on you?
Come to that, what's wrong with doing nothing? How, if you have a kit for this and a course for that, will you ever have an original idea of your own? Would the Brontës have been so creative if they'd been strapped into a Volvo for half the day going to music and movement classes?
