Obs cop, your diary makes good reading, thanks. As for the issue surrounding holds I personally feel the workload is extremely high in the hold and I think given a little time to gain experience it will provide an opportunity if nothing else to learn how to cope in very high workload situations whilst also mixing in the busy environment of the aerodrome surroundings and then moving onto the next high workload situation - the instrument approach itself. I'm sure the more experienced instrument fliers find holds and positioning from the hold to the approach fairly routine but I find they teach me a lot and provide a measure of how I'm progressing depending on how well I fly them and how much I take from the first trip round a hold and successfully apply to the subsequent trips. Although they're not examined for the IMC I think any instructor worth their salt would teach a student how to hold since they're entitled upon passing their flight test to fly IFR in controlled airspace where they could very well be slung into a hold before they go any further. Even though they're busy I still enjoy holds and think they're well worth learning. Just my £0.02