To a new school year and dreams of FINALLY becoming organised

 

A new school term approaches, but I am reluctant to buy into the notion of summer being over.

 

Even though I wasn’t on holiday, it feels like a holiday to let sleeping children lie; to not rouse and rout them out of bed to morosely eat cereal and drag themselves onto school buses. 

 

It’s luxurious to not panic on Sunday evening about the school uniform, still unwashed, or to not spend three hours on a Thursday evening turning the house upside down in search of the missing school tie; or to not receive the information on Monday morning that five sheets of cardboard, blue wool and a bag of rice are absolutely required for the school art project that day. 

 

It's nice to have a break from homework, faking knowledge whilst secretly Googling vast amounts of information, from mathematical to grammatical to historical, that had been learned, once upon a time, but that has all disappeared down some sort of memory plug hole. 

 

So ends the freedom of summer, but there’s something about the beginning of the new school year that makes me feel like this is the year that I will be a better, more organised person.  

 

 

I remember covering my school books with weird wallpaper off cuts and resolving that this year I would always do my homework, that I would pay attention in even the dullest class. That I would study. Every night. For hours. An hour at least. 

 

These resolutions would barely make it to the end of the first week, but each September I would be filled with new enthusiasm.

 

But I’m still the same.

 

The other day I caught myself telling my brother how this year I was going to buy loaves of bread in bulk, and freeze some, so we would never run out on a Thursday morning and have to make lunches out of two leftover Carr’s crackers and half a rice cake.

 

My brother laughed and said: "Yeah, until the morning when you realise you forgot to defrost the bread."

 

But I resolved, full of enthusiasm.

 

I will remember to defrost the bread. I will. For a week at least.

 

Daisy Wilson lives and works in West Cork surrounded by dairy farms and loud children.