Julie Jay: Childminders are like Taylor Swift tickets — you can’t put a price on them

OUR childminder is on a well-deserved holiday, and we are faced with long days to be filled and memories to be made, all against the backdrop of a very wet July and a sodden August.

I would love to pretend we weren’t the family who forgot our childminder was going on holiday. 

I would love to tell you we didn’t rock up to her house and for the locked hall door to be the only hint that something was amiss, but of course, being the last to remember what was said in any parental WhatsApp group is kind of my brand. So we did indeed forget that we would have a fortnight to fill with fun, frolics, and family time. 

Facing down the barrel of 14 days flying solo, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little terrified, not just for myself but for my husband, who is equally awful when it comes to time management and getting any form of work done when Ted is at home with us.

The weather has been horrendous, so I have tried to conjure up as many indoor activities as possible. In desperation, I comb through my childhood memories and recall reading about Enid Blyton’s parents, who turned tables into makeshift boats and went to all sorts of impressive lengths to recreate picnics indoors when rain threatened to scupper their perfect plans. Of course, such imaginative parenting is something only English people would be bothered undertaking.

For the rest of us, it all sounds a bit too much like effort when you could just switch on the movie Super Mario Bros and be done with it.

That said, I have tried my best to keep Ted entertained in as many wholesome activities as possible, with varying degrees of success.

We play with the toy garage, which entertains Ted for a whole five minutes. Lego has proved the best way to pass the hours, and between myself and Ted, I feel we are the missing cog in the National Children’s Hospital construction machine. 

The amount of infrastructure we have built would put any civil engineer to shame, though sadly they usually don’t last long as Ted The Demolition Man knocks them down quicker than you can say ‘half a billion over budget but let’s just blame Brexit’.

Colouring is always a welcome activity, though Ted has proved a bit of a colour tyrant when it comes to allocating the dathanna. Generally, my request for yellow goes unheeded and I am forced to make do with brown and black — in other words, the colours a child psychologist would have a field day deconstructing. 

For any psychologists reading this, I want to clarify that the black sun in my latest artistic masterpiece is less indicative of deep depression and more of my inability to negotiate with my toddler.

The beach is another safe bet to kill a bit of time, but the weather has been distinctly Wuthering Heights, so we usually don’t last that long before even Ted, ever the beach enthusiast, gives up the ghost. 

Still, we have attempted to build sand castles in the rain and even perfected the art of the soggy sandwich, all in an attempt to stave off the inevitable telly-watching that will follow.

Going to the shop tends to be the highlight of our social calendar most days and usually ends with Mammy being fleeced. Try as I might to avert Ted’s eyes as we pass the toy section, you will rarely see us leaving a shop without Ted clutching a new ball or a new water gun, the latter of which will be used to drench me into submission when Ted fancies a trip to the amusements later.

Yes, living in holiday destination Dingle has pros, but a major con is residing within touching distance of a carousel. Safe to say, I will have to perform a miracle to pass off the amount of money I have spent on the summer funfair as a tax expense. But rest assured, I will find some way of convincing the Revenue these were all corporate meetings.

Every now and again, I bump into a fellow childminder-less parent down the amusements, equally mithered and standing in the rain watching their little cherub hook a duck. 

“She’ll be back next week, won’t she?” we console one another. “My fear is she’ll fall in love with the French lifestyle and never come back,” another parent jokes, and for one terrifying moment, we clutch our imaginary pearls and our hearts fill with dread.

The long and the short of it is, any childminder out there: thank you. I don’t know what we would do without you. 

So priceless is what you do for us that it is impossible to put a value on it — not only to mind our children but to mind them so kindly that they run out the door to get to you, is a testament to how well you do your job.

If you have a childminder you love, cherish them. And if our childminder is reading this, thank you for loving Ted for us, and please know if you choose to move to France, I support you fully.

That said, I will also be following you and setting up shop down the road because if I’ve learned anything from these last two weeks, I need you as much as I need Taylor Swift tickets, which is a lot.

• This week's column was written before the birth of Julie's baby - a boy named JJ.