I don’t mind admitting I was dreading the weekend. What would we do without the structure of school work?
Today alone Henry was meant to be having a swimming lesson, then heading to a birthday party and then off for a trial sleepover in the Scout hut ahead of the [aforementioned] sleepout in May. With every calendar alert that pings up on my phone I get another wave of sadness.
But we did have one much anticipated event in the diary that we could still honour. We were going for a WALK!
We’ve not left our property since last Thursday but we had promised ourselves a change of scenery today. It’s a sign of our cabin fever that we were raring to go by 9.30am, delayed only by Xander’s morning nap.
We're lucky enough to have some decent walks on our doorstep, so off we went up through the woods, across the common, down a new footpath we’d never previously explored and out towards the next village before looping back.
It wasn’t *really* a coincidence that our walk took us past some friends’ houses. And don’t tell the rozzers but we spent a glorious 10 minutes standing at the bottom of Matt and Charly’s drive yelling our news at them while the kids had to be restrained from running towards each other.
During a brief pitstop for a refuelling on the return leg we spotted two sets of neighbours also having a shouty chat on the edge of the cricket field. I reckon they could have had the same quality of conversation had they just stayed at home and opened their upstairs windows.
And the whole episode really pressed reset. Walking along familiar paths, ones we’d normally travel on a weekly basis without a second thought, allowed us to momentarily forget all this. I was hit by the obvious realisation that this will be over one day and we will be walking those routes again without a second thought. Three months - if that’s what it is - will pass. And in the years to come we won’t remember how long it felt. Life will get back to normal, we just have to sit this out.
The walk set the tone for the rest of the day. The kids were tired, which meant they were happy to be in the house for the afternoon, and I felt like we’d achieved something - however small - so wasn’t antsy come 3pm about another frustrating and wasted day.
In fact, irrespective of lockdown, I’d say I really enjoyed the day. Either that or my expectations are now so low that leaving the house for 90 minutes is sufficient entertainment. I can just imagine that I’ll have full blown agoraphobia come June. Brilliant.
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