Jack Davidson, four days before doors open.

Several parents in Brocagh have admitted they were at the end of their tether with the summer holidays after it emerged they made their children camp outside the gates of their local primary school since Monday for the opening today.

News of the extreme measures emerged after teachers arrived at St Jacob’s this morning to be met with 13 tents and conditions described like ‘a Glastonbury Festival for Toddlers’ with sweet wrappers and bottles of mineral strewn across the school hedges.

Headmaster Hughes admitted that this year seemed to be worse than others:

“In previous years we’d have had parents sending pupils maybe two days early and telling them to walk ‘deadly slow’ to school. But this year, what with the bad weather and nothing on the TV, they seem to have shipped the children out a lot earlier. They even set up Portaloos and soup kitchens which I suppose shows how thoughtful and caring parents are around these parts.”

Mother Hillary Carney revealed she felt no guilt and argued it will make a man of her son Tommy:

“We were scundered by the time August had arrived. After the boys exited the championship, the weekends were fairly bleak. Last week we took the children to look at the Old Cross at Ardboe in the pouring rain for the 3rd time in a month. Listen, it’ll toughen them up. Four days in the Brocagh wilderness, fighting the elements and wild badgers can bring a 6-year old on leaps and bounds.”

Meanwhile, Master Hughes revealed they will be bringing back Latin, slapping, sums, Greek classics, sewing, dominoes, shouting and going to the toilet in a tin bucket in order to ‘instil a bit of old-fashioned discipline in society around the lough shore’.