Is your hair getting a little greyer? Has the child who was a clean-shaven young pup at the start of September turned into a dishevelled mess with a beard? It can mean only one thing: you are about to emerge from the first stint of the year and you can almost taste the freedom of the half-term break.

Here are a few tell-tale signs that half-term is just around the corner…

1. You have a cold and a hacking cough that you’re pretty sure is worse than anyone else’s in the staffroom. Scrap that: in the history of the world.
2. But, despite the death rattle, you’re still in school.
3. You are mainlining Lemsip.
4. You’ve had an email about the Nativity play/Christmas party.
5. The annual news story appears about parents being fined for taking their kids on holiday during term time.
6. You suggest a half-term holiday (for you) and find that literally every hotel is full. Of teachers.
7. You laugh, madly, at the idea of having time to take a holiday during half-term.
8. You realise you’ve developed a tolerance to Lemsip Max.
9. You look forward to the days during half-term when you can finally plan some lessons.
10. You quietly weep that this is what you are looking forward to.
11. You highlight your calendar with “Game of Thrones days”.
12. Your highlighter has run dry.
13. Friday’s “half-day” is the same length as any other day.
14. You say farewells to colleagues, even though you will see them at half-term club. In school.
15. As you walk out of the school gates, your impossibly awful cold suddenly gets a thousand times worse.
16. You reach for a double-shot of Night Nurse.