Words cannot describe the resentment a corporate wage slave feels when sharing a house with a teacher who has eight (yes, eight, just count them!) weeks off over the summer. I know someone who went through the training to become a teacher merely because he couldn't bear the annual torture at the hands of his (teacher) wife. I am currently realising the horrible truth of it myself.

Our first summer together was spent... well, apart, with the scramble to see as much as possible of each other at weekends. The fact that he was spending his weekdays watching cricket/twiddling his thumbs/indulging in self-abuse was immaterial because he wasn't doing it in *our* home and I didn't have to witness it.

Last summer, I was "deliberately" unemployed so that we could spend the time settling in to our new life in the West Country.

But this summer is different. This summer, I have to get up every morning while he... well, he just *doesn't*! The fact of the matter is, he often *does* get up - this morning he put the rubbish out before I'd even got out of the shower. He spends his time at home sorting out the house from the move, washing clothes and dishes, gardening and preparing for next year at school, so it's not as if he's just lazing around watching the Ashes (although there is, of course, an *element* of that...). But the crux of the matter is, he doesn't *have* to get up at a set time each morning, and that's the bit which slowly eats away at me. That's the bit which makes me press that snooze button just one more time. That's the bit which makes me shuffle grumpily around the house muttering "I don't *want* to go to work" like a sulky teenager.

I know, I know. It's payback time for all those Saturday mornings he had to work during term time whilst I languished in bed. It's his reward for putting up with other people's children for most of their waking hours. That said, I still reserve the right to sulk about it.