Week One lessons learnt

I'm 90% certain that more or less everyone who writes a blog in the UK will be writing something along these lines, having completed their first week of working from home, or children being off school, or both simultaneously. And why should I miss this particular bandwagon? Even if it only occupies thirty people for 3 minutes each, that's another 90 life-minutes occupied out of a potential several months for all 65 million of us. Let's not think about how many life-minutes that is*.

Along with the rest of you, I have now been at home for a week. I haven't been to the shops; I haven't been to the library; I haven't been to work; I haven't run a football training session, or taken my team to a match, or watched a match. I have seen one friend, from the end of her garden path after I deposited groceries outside her house.

So, what are my thoughts at the end of the week?

I must always wear a sports bra when attempting "PE with Joe". This has been the most memorable lesson, and the one that I have learnt from the quickest. This may not be quite so important to other sections of society.

I am immensely fortunate to have a LittleBear who enjoys reading, and who is currently believing wholeheartedly in the continuation of the "school day", even if some of our lessons are watching old David Attenborough programs or completing elements of a 30-day Lego challenge. Having witnessed other people's struggles on social media, the fact that I have got the bulk of a four-and-a-half-hour working day completed every day is nothing short of a miracle.

I am bored of providing three meals a day for three people. I usually get bored with one meal; two is pushing it and three is just deeply tedious.

I wish that the entire family had had radical haircuts before social distancing and isolation kicked in. I already have longer hair than I want, and two somewhat shaggy bears. Soon we will be facing the prospect of Mummy-cuts, which is not something any self-respecting bear needs.

I have rediscovered anxiety. This is probably the least surprising discovery, as I suspect there are a great many people who have little prior experience of anxiety who are now discovering what us regular anxiety-sufferers have been living with for years. The unexpected tears. The panic induced by a total lack of control of one's situtation, creating a life that oscillates between frenzied, yet pointless, activity and paralysing apathy. The obsessive thinking, the sleeplessness, the tightness in the chest that makes you feel you'll never take a deep breath again, the sickness in the pit of the stomach.

In the space of a week I have discovered, and must work to remember, that the highs and lows can come in quick and bewildering succession. On Friday I had a gentle and warm sense that we were OK. We were warm, and fed, and together. We had not simply survived but even managed to enjoy some of our week of working and learning at home. On Sunday I spent much of the day desperately trying not to cry in front of my LittleBear as I looked too far ahead and felt daunted, overwhelmed and frankly terrified at the prospect of this continuing not for days, or weeks, but for months.

I have discovered the enormous blessing that modern technology brings to our lives. I have had video calls with my mother, brother, nephew and in-laws as well as with my colleagues. LittleBear has managed video chats with three of his friends. We have also managed to sit round two dining tables, me and LittleBear here, and Tigger and BoyTigger in The North, playing a board game**. We enjoyed it so much, we played two games, with a pause for a biscuit at half time. It was the simple pleasure of playing a game with friends, with inconsequential chatter, and no health risk. We are an incredibly blessed generation to have that option open to us.

I have decided that routine is important, as it prevents me and my mind spinning wildly out of control. It also provides my anxious and confused LittleBear with some stability and certainty. I have decided to extend this, as much as is reasonable, to the weekend. And we have decided that our new routine weekends will involve making a cake, and having a roast dinner. This second ensures that multiple meals are dealt with in the form of the roast itself, the soup made from the stock and a pie. Because we need pie. The National Flour Shortage may shortly create a Local Pie Crisis however. Ditto a Local Cake Crisis. Before that occurs, we did produce a Battenberg, which is the ultimate Bear Mood Enhancer.

Battenberg makes Happy Bears

And finally laundry. Laundry never ends. Laundry is no respecter of mood. Laundry ignores your anxiety. Laundry does not care about social distance.

* I couldn't help myself. For every month we spend cooped up, assuming we only have to concern ourselves with remaining occupied while we're awake, and assuming we're asleep for eight hours a day and that there are 65 million people in the UK, we have between us 1,934,400,000,000 minutes to occupy. I'm not going to be making much of a dent in it, am I?

** Not technically a board game, as there was no board involved. A card-based strategy game called Dominion. Usually this game dominates our joint summer holidays in the Lake District. It is unusual in having no random feature to it, so unlike Scrabble or cards, we can play the same game simultaneously in two locations.