Post Lockdown Birthday

Eddie turned nine last weekend and deciding on a way of marking the moment was trickier than usual. Everyone else in the family had their birthday this year in 'actual' lockdown so there was no question beyond how to make it special at home together. 

Not so for Eddie.

To him, the world appears pretty much back to normal now. He's been back at school since early September, and the classroom seems similar to what he knew before. The teachers are not required to wear masks, nor are the students (unlike at secondary school where they seem to have become something of a fashion accessory). Changes are subtle. Things look much as they ever did. 

His football team are training and playing matches against rivals home and away; social distancing is encouraged, but you can't put a decent socially-distanced tackle in, and it goes out of the window if a goal is scored, in the natural joy and exuberance of that moment. Swimming classes are back on, though he isn't allowed to shower afterwards - an irrelevance to a 9-year-old.

So why wouldn't a party or a sleepover be possible?

It must seem ludicrous to him that he can be in close proximity to his friends during the school day, play on a football team with seven other players, be in a swimming lesson of a different eight kids, travel to school in a car with two classmates - and yet, because we are a family of five, only have one additional person in the house because of the Rule of Six.

It's difficult to make sense of - especially given that as a secondary school teacher I come into contact with between 150 and 200 students on an average seven period day. 

He has been on a fantasy-kick for the last few months, and so in the end we chose to do the Harry Potter  Studio Tour and experience the 'film-making magic'. Eddie was allowed to bring one friend so that we would be a legal party of six amidst the hundreds of other visitors.

In the end it was a fun day out, completed by a wand-fighting lesson, a broomstick ride, a trainride to Hogwarts and lashings of butter beer (well, one serving to share, since the purchase required remortgaging the house. Actually, the whole thing pretty much cost the price of a week's holiday in Spain, but whose counting in these strange times?

Ready for Reading - Covid Time

Schools closed yesterday.

Now we prepare for 'remote learning' to begin. Eddie and Gertie have stocked up their shelves with books to read, while Gilby prepares to do plenty of garden football challenges.

I sometimes wonder why two out of the three are readers. In a way they all are, but Gilby prefers sporting autobiography while the others are happy with a novel. And he has to be coerced into reading while the others snatch every available opportunity.

Though Gilby was game enough to go to school as a female book character for the second year running on World Book Day. This time as 'Gangster Granny' (last year he was The Boy in the Dress). My pearls and high heels did not survive the day.

In an online 'decluttering' (now that there is covid-time to do that sort of thing) I found this video clip of an early reading session:

Eddie is four, I think (though he is so small that he seems younger), and Gertie must be eight.  I love that Gertie gets a little bit cross with her brother for not finishing a word, and that he seems incapable of sitting still, even for a second. Still, some early seeds of reading love were being sown in both directions.

Four years later Eddie's working his way through the third in the Harry Potter series and begging me to buy him a wand.

'Twelve pounds for a stick?' was Hearth-father's unimpressed response. I think remote learning day two might involve whittling a wand from oak.




Currently Reading: The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne