Remember when the school holidays used to be really boring

By the end of the first week their brains have turned into marshmallows. Come September they’ll need a total reboot.

Secondly, unless you’re a teacher with the same holidays, you have to sort out child care while you’re at work.

And if you haven’t got family living nearby then you’re basically working to pay someone to look after your kid(s) so you can go to work. Go figure.

Not many families can afford the luxury of a parent staying at home these days because houses cost so much.

But the major change in the summer break from when today’s mums and dads were at school is this overwhelming obsession parents have with keeping their children entertained.

At no time can little Hugo or Daisy be allowed to be bored. Parents must, as in the terms of their contracts, permanently stimulate their little brains like they’re running a kids’ club for oligarchs’ offspring on a private holiday island in the Caribbean.

If you’re old enough to remember the Falklands War then you’ll recall your summer holidays seemed to go on for about six months because you were bored off your head.

Your parents didn’t try to recreate Disneyland in your back garden, there was no internet, telly only had four channels, only yuppie p***** had mobile phones and if you wanted to hang around with a mate you knocked on their door to see if they were in.

I know, we were bored rigid for most of the time.

In the 1980s me and my mates were so stuck for ideas that we started dabbling in something we had no business with and before we knew it we were addicted. Golf.

I’m not proud of it because if there’s one sport that goes against everything I believe in it’s that elitist, expensive, pullover-wearing snob-fest.

However, there are very few feelings as deeply satisfying as smashing a little white ball off a tee and watching it soar into the distance.