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!