Phew! We made it. Four months of Christmas holidays, over. It was four months wasn’t it? Or was it five? I think it was four – it certainly felt like it.

Yes, yes, I know, it’s all wonderful and lovely and Christmas was, well, Christmas but it’s the bit afterwards that gets me. Unlike in the UK, where they started their Christmas holidays a week before The Big Day, meaning that there’s an opportunity to get involved in loads of pre-Christmas activities and get in the mood, most of our break was spent in that awful no-man’s land of ‘after Christmas’ – a place where nobody really wants to hang out.

So, we sat amid the remnants of selection boxes and watched another bauble hurl itself off the tree (‘please, take us down,’ it wailed, ‘let this be over.’) and realised that we'd completely forgotten to organise anything for the kids to do. You see, the Christmas holidays are not like the Easter or Summer holidays where we, attempt at least, to have a full schedule of excellent activities to prevent us all from going totally insane. Christmas is all about Christmas and after the presents have been opened there’s sort of nothing to do.

So, I, for one, was very delighted when the alarm went off in the middle of the night on Monday (well, it was actually 7am but it felt like the middle of the night given my body clock adjustment). Lovely, I thought as I gleefully packed up sandwiches and found lost school shoes. Back to normality and routine. Back to reality.

And although everyone is walking around looking completely shell-shocked and it feels as though it should be bedtime when it’s actually only 3pm, I think we’re all glad to have survived another Christmas and come out the other side unscathed.

As for Easter, I’m on the case. They’re already selling eggs in Tesco you know.

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