I WOKE up last Monday morning and realised it was half term... fear gripped me as I prepared to take on the challenges half term presents:

Challenge 1: Get the bus in to town, thankfully without having your head taken off by a bag belonging to a school child who is smaller than said bag.

Challenge 2: Plan a route around town which involves a visit to a decent sandwich shop and avoids all the areas which are full of children, parents, aunties and so on. Mental note to self: Avoid Coppergate and Woolworths.

Challenge 3: Having visited four different sandwich shops, the trek back to the office begins. Sandwich in hand, fight through crowds standing there doing nothing. Take life in one's hand and walk in the road avoiding buses, taxis, cyclists and prams.

Challenge 4: The bus home. The usual queue is six or seven people tired after a long day. In the school holidays, the queue jumps to about 107. Children throw tantrums should they not get to sit down. Parents who never catch buses complain about the cost and how they can't sit down having paid a small fortune for the privilege of catching a bus to their hotels. Meanwhile, the poor York resident who pays for the bus every day has to stand to allow these children the chance to sit down and relax after a hard day traipsing around York.

Finally home and time to assess the challenges.

CA McGall,

Hinton Avenue, York.

Updated: 09:17 Monday, October 31, 2005