There’s nothing quite like a mini break to reset your mood. And this week, amid regrettable circumstances, that was what we all got.
On Thursday we said a fond farewell to Trevor, Andy’s dad. His funeral was a lovely service in a beautiful location on a gloriously sunny day but did, of course, have all the hallmarks of the strange times we live in.
Ten mourners, all travelling as separate households. Ten chairs spaced out two metres apart inside the crematorium. A wife and two children sitting in isolation, unable to reach out and hold each other’s hands or comfort one another. And only nine other people to hear the wonderful words that Andy and his sister had written for their Dad.
But, then again, there were the scores of villagers who came out of their houses to clap as the hearse made its way from the family home to the service, friends and acquaintances paying their final respects. That incredible moment will stay with me forever.
And, despite the tiny gathering it was, at times, possible to forget the pandemic. It was the first time I’d travelled any distance since March - indeed the last journey I made was on 14th March for Andy’s sister’s wedding, possibly one of the last to take place in the country before lockdown. (They honeymooned not in Asia but in their house outside Edinburgh.)
Coursing up the M1 with the radio on and my thermos of coffee beside me felt so beautifully normal.
Henry and Bella spent the day with some exceptionally lovely friends of ours - who shall remain nameless in case the police come knocking - while Xander travelled with me, making up the lucky eleventh at his grandad’s send off.
I dropped the kids off at 8am, each with their little suitcase packed with wet suits, PJs and toothbrushes, and hit the road. When I arrived back to collect them at 6pm - a bit earlier than I’d promised - their faces were a picture. A fleeting moment of ‘oh look we recognise that face!’ before an immediate and very clear demonstration of disappointment that I was there at all.
They’d had an absolute blast. They’d had water fights, played football, done arts and crafts, had a fun second breakfast, watched a movie, eaten roast chicken and spent hours on the trampoline. But best of all they’d done it beside their friends, another 6 and 4 year old who also have a baby brother so my kids could get their fix of soft little heads and dragging another human around like a rag doll. They had played with other children. And they LOVED it.
Before I could round them and their clobber up and get them in the car Bella was in tears because she wanted to ‘stay for a sleepover for a year’. I had to make all sorts of promises about summer sleepovers ‘just as soon as we’re allowed’ before she could be enticed into the car.
But our day away from each other, a day doing something that caused us all - for the most part - to forget the pandemic, recalibrated us all.
Andy went up to his mum’s ahead and stayed a couple of nights, so I was flying solo with the kids for some of Wednesday and most of Friday. And actually that time apart from each other was kind of nice too.
Thanks to his three months of parental leave at the start of the year, we’ve been together in the house for five months now. It’s gone pretty well - no major rows and a reasonable division of labour - but what you lose in that situation is a chance to miss each other. I used to look forward to hearing him coming in from work at 6.45pm as I was upstairs overseeing bath time. I’d look forward to seeing him, to catching up on our days, to just having him home. These days I don’t get a chance to miss him. And in a weird way I miss that.
But the day away from the routine, the monotony, the isolation, revived me. I came back ready to go again, ready for another stint, possibly even - dare we dream - the energy to power through the home straight.
Yesterday I cleaned the oven till it shined, I moved the furniture around in the playroom, I cut Bella’s hair (started as a centimetre trim, went off on a bit of a slope, ended up a good inch higher at the other side, had to level it off, swore Andy to silence, hope she doesn’t notice) and I batch-cooked like a crazy woman. Sick of living on bread-based meals (toast, sandwiches toasted sandwiches) because I am disorganised, I spend £50 in the butcher's and now have a kilo of chilli to find a home for, enough chicken casserole to feed eight people and a fridge full of meat I need to cook up and freeze. Still, I am at least keeping the scurvy at bay for another week.
And now we go into the bank holiday weekend returning to business as usual. The kids found another dead mouse on the lawn and, emboldened from their last experience, picked it up by hand, stroked it a bit and then buried it in what is fast becoming a family plot (Henry thought they were probably brothers), Andy came home and accidentally asked what I was ‘up to’ at the weekend, and I’m writing the blog again.
But don’t be fooled. Three days off and I have nothing more interesting to write about than I have of late. Four hours on the motorway and a family funeral will probably remain the most interesting day of my lockdown.
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