Sam Carlisle

The eight-year-old me hated Barbie. My family couldn’t afford the impossibly-proportioned doll that my friends gleefully dressed as an air hostess or housewife. I made do with her cheaper, lumpen British equivalent, Sindy, instead. And yet I shall be in the queue for the Pepto-Bismol explosion of neon that is the new Barbie movie, starring Margot Robbie as my friends’ brash plastic heroine made real. Our gang includes a retired barrister and a graphic designer who started skating in her late sixties What won me over is not that the film stars bare-chested Ryan Gosling, as Barbie’s anatomically-challenged boyfriend Ken, although obviously that is quite a pull.

Day one of the school holidays this year set the tone for the sprawling six weeks ahead. My teenage son rolled out of bed at a leisurely 1.05 p.m., by which time my daughter had smashed her head repeatedly against the kitchen wall, bitten my leg and trashed our living room. And so began a typical ‘summer break’ for a family with a disabled child. The gap between holiday provision for children with, and without, special needs and disabilities (SEND) during summers has long played out under my roof because I have one of each. Before my non-disabled son reached an age when he could sleep in all morning, I would enrol him in play schemes and clubs or lean on loving grandparents to entertain him while his dad and I worked; the typical summer juggle of so many parents.