We are into the third, or is it fourth, week of 2021. My brain is fuddled, my thoughts are muddled. The UK is in limbo. The days are still short and despite green shoots peeking through the sprinkling of snow we received this weekend – the onset of Spring feels so very, very far away. There is a sense of ennui around the place. The novelty of lockdown wore thin the first time around. This time it has really outstayed its welcome. The hope dangled in front of us back in early December, when the children were at school buzzing with Christmas plans, and the vaccine felt like the miracle we had all been waiting for, has been whipped away. No prize this time. We don’t seem to be winning and as I write this, the news on the radio announced that the UK has just exceeded 100,000 COVID deaths. Jeez. Just think of that number. It seems the only living thing to be having a ball at the moment is the virulent virus. It travels freely around the world at a time we stagnate; crossing borders, mutating, sticking two fingers up to the human race, showing off its ability to succeed. Scientists try and keep up with it. Governments try to govern it. Covidiots try to deny it.
Four weeks into home schooling and the boys still sit hunched from dawn until dusk in front of their screens. Their online schooling is great for drumming in the facts, but they are missing so much more of their wider education. I really fear for their mental wellbeing. Education is more than learning the history of Italian fascism or perfecting simultaneous equations. It’s the humdrum of classrooms, the interaction with teachers and the banter with their mates. It’s mucking around at break and playground politics. It’s the ritual of lining up for school lunch or losing your sports bag. It’s the day-to-day normal boredom of a school week, moving around corridors, dashing up and down stairs, trying not to be late for lessons – a complete contrast to the current ritual of the 20 steps on average it takes to go from bed to desk. Gaming, YouTube, Netflix have replaced dirty rugby knees and soggy socks and I feel they are losing the battle with normality.
I try and keep up with them academically, but they are way, way ahead. Thank goodness they are old enough to crack on with their online existence on their own, and their teachers are conducting live lessons. At least they can take out their frustrations with them instead of me, when I just can’t help them. I feel for those with younger children who have to supervise each lesson, miraculously learning the skill of teaching at the same time trying to juggle their own job. The news is full of desperate parents trying to fulfil their own economic obligations, feeling the pressure of their own work deadlines, at the same time feeling guilty they cannot spend the time they feel they need to with their kids. My own domestic obligations have increased – having four of us working from home most of the time creates mess and dust. My routine of school runs and being able to work all day on my own projects with my own work deadlines to pay the bills, has been rudely interrupted. I have to think of lunch. I have to tiptoe around everyone during day-long Google classroom meets, or my husband’s Teams calls. I feel I am around purely to make hot chocolate and keep the larder stocked, cramming my work in when I can. And I feel I am the nagging one when I attempt to kick the boys outside for a dog walk or a run during their breaks, as I re-iterate yet again the importance of fresh air, routine and exercise.
This change of lifestyle is impacting us all. Back in Lockdown 1, column inches were written about the good this change of pace may do us. Less time travelling, more time for ourselves. More reading, more gardening, yoga, cycling and walking in all that lovely sunshine the UK was bathed in. I think many of these articles were written by people without younger children, or by those who were already set up to work from home, who could afford the luxury of time. The stark reality is parents have spent nearly a year now tearing their hair out. We’re fed up trying to explain to toddlers why they can’t share a birthday party with their friends, or see granny, or kick a football around a park. I for one have been the bearer of bad news so many times, I am sure my two have lost faith in anything I have left to say.
I look around at the surreal world where masks have replaced smiles and people are scared; and I feel sad. I feel sad for the world that once was when we could hug and kiss and make plans. And I know this virus isn’t going away anytime soon and fear that the normal that was may never return how we remember. Will generations to come look at old footage of life before 2020 with horror – seeing people all crammed into a bar or theatre without masks – the way we look at TV of the 1970s and 80s now, shocked at how normal smoking and blatant racism was?
I vowed I would lay off the ‘poor old me’ blogs as I know that there are thousands and thousands of people worse off than me – people who have lost loved ones to this deadly virus – or to other illnesses and were unable to be with them at the end. Those front-line workers, the real super-heroes who give their all to the NHS and then have to go back to their homes and try and continue with some kind of normal with their own families. People who are nursing loved ones at home with terminal illnesses or are living in lockdown trapped in abusive relationships. And those who have lost out economically, plans of retirement, new jobs or career moves scuppered.
Allow me to wallow a while, as I just spout out my own personal frustrations and fears. I have learned that it is OK to feel that life is unfair at a moment in time – that it is OK to not feel OK especially when everything isn’t hunky-dory. There is no hierarchy in feeling crap. One person’s problems may sound trivial compared to another’s – but that doesn’t devalue how real it feels to them.
I know this will pass for all of us. Just sometimes, sometimes though, it is good to have a good rant. And just let off steam.
© The Real Tilly Fairfax
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