Five reasons why I feel no guilt taking holidays

A beautiful woman plays ball on a North Island beach with her dog called Jerry

As a teacher, over the years I have heard a lot of bleating and horse manure about my holidays.

Wah wah, cry me a river.

Here are five reasons why it's good to howl at the moon after 10 weeks of work.

1 Holidays  allow me to regain some energy. Being a teacher is exhausting. Leading a school is demanding. Yes, the old, recharge-the-batteries excuse. Thank you very much.

2 It's good to pause. Get some context. Establish some perspective and keep it fresh.

3 Sleep is good for my health. During term time I'm usually in bed and asleep between 9 and 9.30pm. I wake at 4.50am. Why? Because I'm cream crackered by 9 and I need to get to school early each day to prepare. These are old habits. 

4 Projects. During holidays these habits shift to later to bed and later to rise. Mental labours are replaced by physical labours as I take on projects around the house and land, but, curiously, I'm nowhere near as tired!

5 Time to meet the wife. As you know, she's a nurse, and, in the past when the kids were growing up, during the week, we were often like ships in the night. Holidays are important family times. In the past it was going places with the family. These days it's going to them to do projects (see number 4).

Okay! Outta my way, I'm off to Palmerston North to do some painting for our youngest.  See y'all in two weeks time.