Daughter's school broke up for the Easter holidays this week.

Like most mums I shall have to continue to go to work, although I do have a few days off next week. Wouldn't it be lovely to have the same holidays as schoolchildren?

Nowadays I certainly wouldn't get bored during a six-week holiday in the summer like I used to when I was a child. They don't know how lucky they are.

I suppose hospitals and businesses couldn't really close down for vast chunks of the year, nice though it would be for us workers.

Daughter is already asking me what I've got "planned" for the holidays. By this I think she means exciting, and probably expensive, days out.

I hadn't even thought about it yet. In fact I had forgotten her holidays started this week until the day before she broke up - one advantage of her being too old for me to have to organise childcare for her, I suppose.

I guess I shall have to think of something for us to do during my time off. Hopefully the weather will stay as nice as it has been recently as a bit of sunshine always makes any day out more enjoyable.

"But what can I do until you're off work?" she asked.

"Well, you could tidy your bedroom, that will take about a week from the looks of it," I replied. '

"Don't try to be funny," she responded. "Anyway, it is tidy."

I called her bluff and went to have a look. How anyone can describe a room with clothes, soft toys and CDs littering the floor, where the hamster cage is buried under a pile of magazines, where there is a collection of used cups and glasses on every available surface and where the bed obviously hasn't been made for at least a week, as "tidy" is beyond me.

"Well, I've brought my washing downstairs," was her response. "What can I do during the holidays?"

"How about starting your revision for next term's exams?" I suggested. "Then you could get better marks than last year."

"I've already started my revision," she said.

"No you haven't," I said. "Spending a whole afternoon deciding whether to get a metallic purple folder or a metallic blue folder to put your revision notes in isn't actually revising.

"Spending hours drawing pretty coloured headings on bits of paper and then arranging them in your new metallic folder isn't revising.

"Talking to your friends on the phone about how unfair your teachers are isn't revising.

"Writing revision notes and reading through your text books IS revising."

"Oh God, you are so boring," she said.

"I know, I'm a mum, I'm supposed to be," I replied.

In the end we compromised and she promised to do some proper revision and sort her room out during the first week she was off as long as I promised some exciting days out during my free time.

Now all I've got to do is think of somewhere to go.