Unexpected Benefits of Lockdown

Like most families we have had to quickly establish a home-working routine that suits everyone, and thereby create some structure to our locked-down days.

Last week I managed at home by myself and had to multi-task my way through teaching my students alongside my own children, while Hearth-Father tied up things at the garage.

There were some noteworthy achievements during that time, though. I finally rediscovered what the bottom of the laundry basket looks like. It isn't a black hole, after all, though most reports put its last sighting back in 2006, before the advent of children.

My brother-in-law was rude enough to suggest that the image had been photoshopped. As though my photoshopping skills were superior to my laundry ability. In true, Hollywood ending, socks long consigned to the 'odds' basket have been happily reunited with their once forlorn partners.

Not that there is anywhere to put all this newly laundered stuff. Turns out, if it's all done at once then it doesn't actually fit into the available wardrobes and drawers. Who knew?

We have managed two family facetime calls in the last fortnight, with four households tuned in simultaneously, joining Sussex, Surrey and Dorset. We didn't quite get the Isle of Man contingent online at the same time, but will try again with that next week.

Another highlight was that Gertie and Gilby baked bread. Together. Unprompted. Almost harmoniously. Or at least as if they quite liked each other. Ok, so it didn't quite rise as they might have hoped, but still. We chewed gratefully, if for longer than expected.

And brand new horizons have been reached today; while I merrily created resources for several different year groups for home learning this morning, half the lawn was dug up ready for reseeding. Oh yes. Hearth-Father has been very busy indeed. I shall have to get over myself and forgive the radio blaring all day long that has accompanied his labours.

Currently reading: The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer

Lockdown

I wrote a poem called 'Lockdown'.  Apparently the poet laureate did, too, so that's not very original. He published his last week, though; so much quicker off the mark than me. But then he's poet laureate. 

Lockdown

The thermometer thrives in the fruit bowl. 

It has moved from the anonymity

of the bathroom cupboard and has new status.

There’s daily disorder while the new world 

order works itself out. What is essential?

Narrowing of horizons on all sides;

as the requisite distance further widens.

We find new fulcrums on which to pivot.

Lines are marked out for us to stand behind,

that were not there before. Along the line 

much is online and that line must be toed.

Solidarity gestures remotely 

jostle with unhealthy suspicion of 

strangers given wide berths. WhatsApp, on tap, 

alerts to the communal carers’ clap.

The pace of change has infected us all.

A nation’s febricity rises into

unsettling peace. I reach for an apple.

Ted Gooda

March 2020

Currently reading: Reading Poetry by Tom Furniss and Michael Bath

(Which is what has prompted today's burst of creativity.)

Guacamole Legs

Like 850, 000 other people around the world, we have been participating in a daily act of worship by following PE with Joe Wicks every morning this week on YouTube.

In the spirit of home educating, both hearth-parents are joining in with the kids. Kempton also decided that she wanted to be part of the action this morning.

And part-way through the session Eddie declared that he was unable to continue since his legs 'felt like guacamole'.

While very much enjoying the terribly middle-class simile (it is evidently far too long since he has had any working-class jelly) I am inclined to agree with him.

It is Thursday evening, day four, and I am in agony. From now on I have declared myself allergic to anything Joe Wicks says that has the word 'squat' in it.

And I can't be the only mother that is ever so slightly miffed that Joe thought it was a good idea to jump against the walls during yesterday's Spiderman move...



Currently reading: War Doctor by David Nott

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