Fionnuala Kennedy
Head, Wimbledon High School
8 January 2025
Welcome back to school and a warm welcome to 2026!
So, we’ve had three whole weeks off, which felt like a real luxury, but also, as ever, something of a pressure: how best to use it? How to feel truly revived on our return? What’s the best way to really maximise on relaxation whilst also seeing family and friends, getting homework done, exercising, feasting, getting fresh air, in my case giving the house a much-needed clean, buying gifts people might actually want, wrapping gifts in an insta-acceptable way, watching our favourite Christmas movies, improving ourselves with some great cultural activities, but also spending time doing nothing because we know we have a really busy term just around the corner.
All that emphasis on making the most of our leisure time can be truly exhausting, and it makes me laugh that here we are in 2026 with incredible innovation all around us and yet no one has yet found the formula to just being able to truly relax– in fact, if anything, it’s harder than ever.
It’s easy to blame technology for this, our inability to feel truly refreshed after time off. If we spend three weeks doom-scrolling on our phones we are, after all, going to feel pretty terrible and unrelaxed, about ourselves and about the world.
But most of us don’t do that, or try not to, and I, in fact, quite like my phone and all of the handy things it can do for me. And it annoys me sometimes when technology gets the blame for everything that is wrong with our world, as though before the smartphone everyone was a perfectly balanced and wholesome human being who was nailing well-being 100% I can tell you that’s not the case: I did after all – and this will shock you – live for twenty years of my life without a mobile phone, and so I’m one of those old people who remembers the time before…
So for 2026, what am I suggesting to counteract our fear that we don’t use our time properly? If the answer is not to take all tech and burn it in a massive pit?
Well, it’s time not to focus on what doesn’t make us feel good and alive and well, but on what does. When do we feel that sense of flow, when we forget the passing of time because we are absorbed in what we are doing in an active and positive way, when our imaginations and focus are fully engaged?
For some of you it might be drawing or painting; for others playing the piano; some of you I know absolutely love a cross country run or a swim, or dancing; for others it might be creative writing.
But for all of us, there is a wealth of opportunity out there to absorb ourselves in a positive way, to learn about life from the perspectives of others, to travel to ancient and future and far-off lands, to experience cultures and sights we’ve not seen before, and all for free – and of course that is through reading. And that’s how I truly relax, the time I spend which I never regret or feel sad about having spent; when I have a book in my hand my own, selfish worries disappear and I sit imaginatively in a different space, one where – very often – smartphones don’t exist.
And as chance would have it, this year is the Year of Reading, officially decreed by the government in their new campaign ‘Go All In’ (great idea, dreadful title); so we will be talking a LOT about reading this year, about why it’s wonderful (in my view, it makes you a better human being, so why wouldn’t you do it); but it can also be a real comfort; as Alan Bennett so beautifully puts it in his play The History Boys:
The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
Alan Bennett,
So look out for all of the different ways in which we’re going to be celebrating the wonder of reading, including asking for recommendations from you, from your parents, from your teachers – and what better way to kick that off than with Mr Doepel, Dr Parsons, Miss Webb and Mr Griffiths sharing with you what they loved reading this holiday:
Mr Doepel – The man who changed the way we read (The story of Allen Lane and Penguin Books) by Jeremy Lewis
Dr Parsons – Every Valley by Charles King
Miss Webb – What I Ate in One Year (and related thoughts) by Stanley Tucci
Mr Griffiths – Neither Here Nor There – Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson
