Lock Down Week 2

Towards the end of this week with the chocolate supplies diminishing and even the blessed, saviour   milkman sold out of his extortionately priced chocolate hobnobs, I began indulgently dreaming of toffee crisps and donuts I had an urge to join in with the local festivities and spruce up the front of the house.

Well, I say urge…

If I’m completely honest it was driven by two Facebook posts I’d seen in the last half hour from two friends who had been visited by policemen giving out Easter Eggs to bored kids on lock down. I had the bored kids but was I communicating that fact sufficiently to the world?

Their wonderful kids had drawn beautiful uplifting rainbows, filling the street view with colour and hope as well as written slogans of gratitude to NHS staff and other key workers interspersed with love hearts and flowers. A fantastical sight for all on their daily constitutional!

Our porch had a rather paltry rainbow on display one that would barely be visible from the road, my youngest son – the artist - following his big brother’s tradition of doing as little amount of work as possible for each given task (part two of the tradition is starting it beyond the last possible point it would be sufficient to begin) had under duress painted it the week before.

He enjoys it when we do these things together honest, but I have never known a kid have so many excuses and distractions or a kid who can take so impossibly long to start any given activity from picking up a towel on the bathroom floor to the incredibly ‘painful for all’ weekly SATS revision homework. (The book says 10 minute activities, I do it with him while his brother goes to football practice and is out of the house for 2 hours – we’re often still doing it on his return…)

Anyway there was no way a policeman driving down our road would spot the rainbow so I had to take action! Now I am not callous enough to draw my own felt tip creations nor use my left hand to write child-like, misspelt messages of support for our brave key workers. That thought did not cross my mind.

Spurred on by the drive for ‘bear hunting’ that week – a fun way for children and soppy adults alike to enjoy their daily exercise by spotting cuddly toys in people’s windows, I lined up a selection of teddies the kids owned in my own bedroom window.

Actually, I went nuts, popping in Dobby from the Wonderful World of Wizardry, (Nearly 50 quid on the studio tour now confined to the blanket box), Paddington (better value at the cost of 3 empty marmite jars and postage and packing!), a Yoda, a meercat a dog, a traditional bear and finally an Easter Bunny lest we forgot the reason for this charade… free police chocolate!

Needless to say, I did not receive any Complimentary Easter Eggs from her majesty’s constabulary, though maybe I cheered up a daily walk or two.

Lock Down Week 1

I honestly don’t think I’ve never been as tense as I was that week. I had followed the deaths around the world and seen the horror in Italy and what once was a, ‘We might get an extra fortnight off work!’ kind of buzz became a serious and very sobering ‘Some of us might die’.

As I put the final little boisterous remainder of my class on the bus on the last Friday of school with a concluding side cuddle and a ‘Be good for Mum!’ he waved and I felt overwhelmed with the enormity of this situation. I wanted to get home, to be home, to be with my husband and my boys.

Because we had word to shield my husband and because we had already our children off school for a week, for the first 10 days, we decided I would try and social distance from the family, which meant my husband sleeping in his home office, me sitting on my own sofa whilst they squashed together sometimes in snuggly looking cuddles and sometimes in a frustrating ball of sharp elbows, awkward stretches and explosive frustrated complaints.

It felt lonely.

I struggled to stay asleep and woke early.

One morning at dawn waking suddenly, terrified, hearing a banging on the porch window feeling my nest was under attack.

‘Who was that?’ hoping that maybe it was Poppa, my octogenarian father, who I had invited to suffer lockdown with us, knowing he would not stick to staying home and worrying about his ever increasing ‘forgetfulness’ he does usually turn up at 5a.m. having always a burning desire to ‘beat the traffic’ on his hour journey to Manchester from Blackpool.

But even as the thought it might be him flashed through my mind, I knew it was not him - he could barely manage a weekend with us, the hustle of modern family life, the uproar, commotion and potential trip hazards of the older one and sulks of the little one and of course my regression to moody teenager when we are in each other’s company for too long.

I tiptoed down the stairs and peered around the corner of the front door, imagining the creak of the Hammer House - no one there, relief… then I heard it again, this time less of a knock and more of the irregular noise you might hear if you were being burgled and it was coming from upstairs.

I ran back up knowing I always left my window open and expecting a size 10 and a jogging bottomed leg to be halfway through the glass… relief again no! Skittishly, I ran to the little one’s room, him snuggled up looking angelic but snoring like a hippo.

I tiptoed into the teenager’s room remembering a recent tweet I’d seen, ‘I don’t have a favourite child, but there is one I try really hard not to wake up at the weekend.’ Peeled up his blind and heard the tap on the glass again. I jumped. Then looked toward Tiffin, happily awake and banging his little nose against the glass wall of the gerbilarium! Terrifying!