Day Seven: I've hit the wall. Already.

So I’ve hit the wall sooner than I expected to. We’re a week into self-isolation and I’ve had my first small cry.

Today has been tough.

I don’t know that any of it is insurmountable individually, but all of it together is a recipe for a pretty shitty few months.

The repetition is hard. Every single day is the same. Same faces, same to do list, same view.

Much like a new term at school, I was up for it on Monday but after four relentless days of “would you do that at school?”, “do you speak to Mrs Benson like that?”, “um, can anyone hear me?”, “sit on your bottom please”, “don’t kneel on the table”, “leave her alone”, “I didn’t see it so I’m not telling him off”, “why do you think I want your bogey?”, “you can get your own drink”, “the quicker you eat your vegetables the sooner you can get down”.... I am done.

My day started at 5am and finished at 7pm and in that time I had three work calls totalling two hours. For one of those Bella was standing at my shoulder asking if we could get a pet dog. So for about 90 minutes I was physically alone. That was it.

Homemade seesaws...

All this chat about learning Spanish, taking up crocheting, reading the complete works of Dick Francis, catching up on the entire Blackadder back-catalogue is, frankly, utter shit for so many people. I have considerably less time to myself than I had before that, and I think most parents of primary school children would agree.

I’ve started offering the children money to stop talking.

Henry, I have discovered, is incapable of silence. If he’s not talking to us - asking questions (are aliens real, is the tooth fairy in isolation, where did the bullet from my nerf gun just go?”), requesting favours (do you have a screwdriver, please can you find me a stapler, will you go upstairs and get me some socks), wondering about any number of statistics out loud (who was the youngest person to learn chess, how much does the moon weigh, what’s the biggest Lego rocket ever built) - he’s wittering away at Xander, mainly just pressing his nose up against Xander’s face and screeching ‘I LOVE YOU ZOO ZOO!!’ over and over. It’s cute but my goodness it’s annoying for the 50th time that morning.

We roped in Nanny on the phone to listen to Henry read.

Tonight we opened the front door at 8pm to be greeted by cheering and clapping for the NHS. I wasn’t sure about the whole thing (not that I don’t think the NHS workers are absolutely, beyond-words incredible, I’m just not one for that sort of participatory emotion) but I was blown away by how the sense of community affected me. Just seeing other people - joining in something, hearing whooping in every direction in the distance, raising my wine glass to the GP who lives opposite - was so uplifting.

And then I had a contraband chat with our next door neighbours over the railings that separate our houses. It was so joyous to talk to other people in the flesh. Just five minutes chat left me feeling half sane again.

But it also served to remind me that we have a long long way to go.

And I don’t know if I’m cut out for it.

That was when I cried a bit.