I’m mortified it’s now been 11 days since I posted a blog. My daily post gradually became a weekly post and that is now slipping further towards fortnightly. Perhaps before long you can look forward to an annual post, which I will endeavour to make as hilarious as those letters you get in Christmas cards from decades-past colleagues telling you in tedious detail about how their car failed its MOT, indiscreetly blathering on about the status of their daughter’s marriage and relaying a blow-by-blow account of their brother-in-law Clive's disastrous holiday to Iceland in February.
To tell the truth, the reason things have gone quiet over here is because we have had a brief sniff of normality, and we are revelling in every last minute of it. Indeed I have rather forgotten the blog - which was such a focus of lockdown - exists at all.
Henry is back at school full time - his allotted two weeks was extended to four thanks to a shift in the distancing rules from 2m to 1m+ - whatever that means. Bella continues to go to nursery every afternoon. And Xander is basking in the undivided attention of whichever parent is on the childcare shift.
My exercise classes have resumed, we’ve had a few (garden) playdates, and we’re planning our summer holiday - a week in a Tuscan villa with family replaced by a weekend camping in Southampton with friends. So life has very much shifted into the normal side of 'new normal'.
I honestly feel as if the last three months have been a bad dream. I know everyone does, but we are lucky enough to have woken briefly, felt the flood of relief that it was all in our imagination, and are now kicking back thanking our lucky stars we dodged a bullet.
This is all very cocky, and we shall almost certainly now be struck down as the second wave gears up for a visit thanks to all those parched folk who haven’t had a drink for three months and just had to go out at the weekend and exchange sweat and saliva with the general public in a packed pub before passing out on the pavement in a pool of their own bodily fluid.
But for now, I am determined to kid myself things are back to something like normal, while I can. For in two weeks it will be the summer holidays and we will resume the March-June routine once again, with only the slightest relief that there’s no home schooling to be done (though by the time Henry returned to school in late June we were in a daily race against the clock to get as much work done as we could before his 45 minute attention span ran out).
The summer holidays are never easy - six weeks of juggling work with amusing the children, trying to show them a good time while trying to meet deadlines - but usually we have a few months to psych ourselves up for it, we have a week abroad to look forward to, and we know it’s just a few weeks of crazy in an otherwise normal year.
This year, however, I’ve had a glimpse of what the summer will be like if I don’t seriously review our operation, and it’s given me chance to get ahead of the game and address the impending stress head on.
I can no longer handle snatching minuscule moments to try and work - and I mean moments: through lockdown if I found myself alone I would hurriedly open my emails, try and write a couple of paragraphs or schedule a meeting before I was interrupted again. By my reckoning I achieved over 8 hours what I’d normally manage in two. The upshot is I was constantly distracted, the kids never got my full attention, and I was unproductive and permanently stressed. And even with an average of 1.5 kids to look after between 9 and 3 now, that’s still largely the case. I think I spend more time walking to and from school than I do sitting at my desk.
So I’ve devised a strategy that I reckon with a bit of discipline (which is admittedly not my strong suit) could work. I’m going to work in three or four strict two-hour shifts, starting at 6am and ending at 9pm. No work when I'm off, no kids when I'm on. Which means even on a day that we go out I can still fit in a good handful of hours work and create some fun memories for the smalls.
It sounds hellish (I’m not excited by The Regime, trust me) but I have also had a glimpse of what life could be like if I can pull it off.
Our weekday mornings with just Bella are completely new to us. Bella has never had us to herself really - pre-Covid she would have Fridays off nursery and she and I would run errands, potter around the house, occasionally do something like bake or make a birthday card for someone and more often than not go for coffee and cake just because. But she’s never had regular time alone with us and it’s something she desperately needs. (Xander is still here but is either asleep or going with the flow - plus he can be easily fobbed off with a rice cake and a ball to chase.)
This past two weeks, knowing she’s been going off to school at noon, we’ve each taken some time in the mornings just to hang out with her. Get involved in whatever game she wants to play, read to her, let her help with some cooking - all the stuff I normally dismiss because I have too much else to do. (I sound like such a dreadful mother.)
And you don’t need a degree in psychology to understand just how much she has benefited from this. Her mood swings have all but disappeared, the tears that come on like a tap have stopped, she is happier, calmer, more communicative and more content, and as a result so are we. She and Henry are even getting on better and I’m sure it’s because she has these few hours of attention every day. (And I must also credit the return to the school routine which I know has had a big impact on their behaviour.)
So the next fortnight before the summer holidays begin will be an experiment in The Regime. From today I will be digging deep for the disciplined, focused, clock-on, clock-off worker bee mentality that has hitherto evaded me these past 38 years.
If I can make it work it won’t just get us through this summer, it could be the answer to school holidays for the next decade or more.
Wish me luck.
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Postscript: As I read back through this post I realise how terribly boring it is yet I have neither the time nor the inclination to re-write it. But rest assured I'll up my game for the next one and, if you're lucky, will include a long, drawn out tale of the time in 2012 that I accidentally drank radiator fluid and had to get a cab to A&E at 11pm.
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