The wall planner by the kettle has four colours for the summer. Blue is holiday club, green is Mum and Dad, orange is my annual leave and pink is Rob's. I coloured it in on a Sunday in March with the felt tips from Isla's pencil case, and it has hung there ever since like a very small, very cheerful treaty.
Rob finishes work by half past one, but I'm out of the house by quarter to nine on Mondays and Tuesdays and working from the dining table on Thursdays, and neither of those is a day for a nine-year-old and a five-year-old to be left to their own devices. So every summer we do the same sum, and this year I wrote it down.
Seventeen days to cover
From Thursday 24 July to Tuesday 2 September, the days I'm normally working come to seventeen once you take out the August bank holiday. That is the number the planner has to deal with. This is how it splits.
- Holiday club: 6 days
- Mum and Dad: 8 days
- My annual leave: 3 days, the Monday, Tuesday and Thursday of the week in Filey
Rob's leave is separate. He has two weeks. One is Filey, and the other he has split into single days, mostly Wednesdays and Fridays, so there's an adult at home and a car outside for the days out. Those aren't the days that need covering, which is why they're not on the list.
Holiday club, in pounds
The club is a sports camp at a school up the road, not ours, and it costs £32 a day per child. Six days for both of them is £384. We pay through Tax-Free Childcare, which means putting £307.20 into the childcare account and the government adding £76.80, so what leaves our own bank account is £307.20. Read the rules for yourself, because there are conditions and I only know ours.
The club only sells full days, and with Rob home by quarter to two we're paying for an afternoon we don't strictly need. I've decided not to count that against it. It's the price of knowing the children are somewhere safe from a quarter to nine to three, and there is no half-price option.
They've done three days so far: 24, 28 and 29 July. Alfie came home on the first day with a lanyard, a sunburnt nose and a certificate for "most enthusiastic player", which now lives under his pillow. Isla says it's fine, which in her language is a rave review, and has found a netball group on the far court. I pack the lunches as usual, about £1.30 each, which comes out of the grocery budget, not the childcare one.
Mum and Dad, in kind
My mum and dad have the children for the other eight days, starting today. It's a Thursday, so I am at the dining table with the laptop while the kids are in Bramley, and Dad has announced that he's taking them on the bus to Kirkgate Market, because he's a retired bus driver and that's what a day out looks like to him.
They won't take money, so the thank-you is in kind: flowers when I remember, a lasagne in their freezer, and a bag of what Dad calls spice, which is sweets. There are rules too. Mum's is never more than two days running, so our days are spread out and they get a rest between. The petrol to Bramley and back is about £2 a day, so roughly £16 over the eight.
It would be wrong to say it costs nothing. It costs them a lot, and I know that. They're retired, not idle, and eight days of two children in a hot summer is real work.
What it came to
If all fourteen childcare days had been holiday club, it would have been £896, or £716.80 after the top-up. The eight days with Mum and Dad are worth £512 at club prices, or £409.60 net of what we'd have had to find ourselves. We spend £307.20 plus £16 petrol, about £323 for the lot.
I'm not saying one is better than the other. Holiday club is a day of other children and a proper tired child at the end of it. A grandparent day is a quieter pleasure. We've worked out what suits us, and I have a planner on the wall that says so in felt tip.
