A new week. Week 4. No, week 5? God, who knows? Time has started to be meaningless. The days now merge into weeks and the weeks have started to sort of dissolve into one big block of time.
We won’t remember April or May in the future. They’ll just be bundled into that period known as ‘lockdown’. Like when people have been in a years long coma. Or prison (I imagine). The days don’t count. You mark the passing of time in weeks. Soon it’ll be months.
It’s like having a baby. The first time round, people ask you how old the baby is and you say proudly “13 and a half weeks tomorrow!”. The second time you say “Just over three months”. The third time you say “He was born in July so…..” and hurriedly try to work it out on your fingers without looking like a dreadful mother.
At first the lockdown days went by really slowly - “I can’t believe we’ve been doing this for TEN DAYS!” - but the disbelief has gone now, replaced with resignation that while we’ve been doing this for 38 days there could well be another 38 to go.
Since the very beginning I’ve likened it to being at the airport when your flight has been delayed. If the information boards tell you it’ll now leave in three hours you can process that, focus on the end point, pace yourself through the time you have to kill. Count the minutes past until the gate information appears.
We don’t have that luxury because no one knows how long we’ll be cooped up. We are in the equivalent of queuing at the information desk before some disinterested woman called Sue repeats the same she has told the previous 15 people - the plane is still in a country several hours away, they’re trying to find a spare one, they’ll tell us more as soon as they know but in the meantime here’s a voucher for a Boots meal deal now sod off.
I only know what day it is now because of the clapping. And the paper comes at the weekend. Minus the magazines - always minus the bloody magazines.
We can’t even gauge the day by what’s on TV because that has largely stopped. I put it on the other day only to be confronted with My Family circa 2002. The BBC is fighting to justify the TV licence and the best they can muster from the archives is My Family? Heaven help us.
Still, we trundle along. Henry had a Zoom chess lesson yesterday with Olly, a chess teacher friend from our NCT gang and NCT Sammy, his Very First Friend, (not to be confused with School Sammy) and we got a glimpse of old Henry. For a full hour he was engaged, sparky, joining in and had a little twinkle in his eye again. Then Olly lost control and the virtual backgrounds came out. Things went downhill pretty rapidly after that but it altered Henry’s mood for the rest of the day.
We went for a walk and three minutes down the road it started to rain. The first time in weeks. The kids loved it. They were dancing in it, spinning round, deliberately standing in drips running off the shop awnings we were sheltering under.
Bella tucked all Henry's soft toys into bed and announced they had Coronavirus because they’d got too close to each other. It’s only a mild case, I believe, because she just prescribed ‘a nice sleep’ and then they’d be up and about. Thank God.
And for our part we have started to recognise when we are on the precipice, about to tip over into losing our temper, shouting and making threats we can't keep about no bedtime story and a tablet ban. And I think they can tell too, so as we gave them due warning we were about to lose it, they eased off the gas and we all just about avoided an epic collision.
They must have sensed the mood because they both ate the fish pie I served, with next to no bribery. Lots of ketchup, but no bribery. (Henry has form in this space - it was fish pie that I served on the infamous occasion he looked at his plate, took a deep breath and, on the exhale, said very quietly ‘Oh wow that’s disgusting’.)
Suddenly it was 6pm and Xander was going to bed, the big two were having stories with Nonna and we were on the home straight. Another day over. Chalk it off on the wall.
I’m hopeful I’ve done enough to get parole for good behaviour. Fingers crossed.
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