Celebrate the moments

Nearly nine weeks.

Nearly nine weeks of being at home with only these four walls, two bears and one cat for company.

Nearly nine weeks of attempting to create some kind of routine and stability for my LittleBear, and even hoping that occasionally there might be moments of education tucked in there somewhere.

Nearly nine weeks of glumly reading the news and discovering what new idiocy a cabinet minister has blurted out, what new lie has been honed, how many people have died.

Nearly nine weeks of trying, and often failing, to work productively from home. Trying to design scientific instruments when my notes, reference documents, old designs and colleagues are all elsewhere. Some of these can be accessed remotely, but two filing cabinets full of annotated diagrams of a twenty-two year career designing and testing instrumentation isn't really compatible with remote access.

It's easy to be dragged down. It's easy for the days to blur into one and time to drift by, each day's tears and tantrums feeling much like the previous day's. It's easy to find that every day has too many tears and too few triumphs.

So today, for one day only, I shall celebrate the triumphs.

I went to work for the morning and made a stupidly complex instrument work. Everything came together; years of experience, understanding and knowledge flowed through my fingers and into the beast in front of me, as tweak by tweak I tuned it up into doing exactly what we'd designed it to do. One of those days that comes around only once or twice a year. Most instruments are considerably more recalcitrant and throw up considerably more problems.

I came home and after lunch with my bears, then coaxed the smaller one into attempting not one, but two pieces of schoolwork. He expressed extreme reluctance to tackle either but then both he confessed to rather liking by the end, and being proud of the outcome. And to cap it all, LittleBear's brand new cricket bat arrived whilst in the middle of this burst of scholastic achievement*.

Armed with the new bat, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the local Recreation Ground, and LittleBear discovered the great joy of a decent bat, and the ability not simply to hit, but to thwack, hoick, loft, welly, and smack the ball to all corners of the field. His strokes straight down the wicket were frankly terrifying and had the bowler ducking for cover.

And now, having gloried in one of the few genuinely positive days I can think of in the last nine weeks, I have ordered a curry for dinner. And I am taking great joy, not in the eating of the curry as it's not here yet, but in the fact I can buy takeaway curry via PayPal and cycle to collect it in an appropriately socially-distant fashion.

There are still moments of good in life.


* The reason LittleBear needed a brand new cricket bat is a story of its own, but involves tears, rage, and a broken cricket bat.

How many hours in the day?

The world (and when I say world, I mean internet) appears to be full of people who are having to find ways to fill their days while in lockdown. Amusing little memes about how many times a day they're cleaning their kitchen, or whimsical ideas for craft projects. Expressions of boredom.

Frankly, and excuse my language, fuck that shit.

Here's how the hours in my day currently get used....

• A minimum of 1 hour per meal, three times a day, preparing, eating and clearing. And yet sometimes an hour isn't enough for three people to eat toast. How is this? That's at least three hours per day just providing meals. 
• Half an hour in the Joe Wicks torture chamber.
• 4.5 hours working from home*
• 4.5 hours homeschooling*
• 1 hour playing football. Or cricket. Or catching. Or some other sporting permutation in the garden with LittleBear.
• 1 hour playing Minecraft (also with LittleBear I hasten to add).
• At least half an hour cleaning up the kitchen in an attempt to avoid a localised outbreak of listeria. Somehow this is necessary on top of clearing up after a meal. Crumbs and sticky patches simply materialise out of the ether.
• At least half an hour on laundry or cleaning or tidying or finding missing objects.**
• Half an hour bike ride after dinner, because otherwise LittleBear isn't tired enough to fall asleep.
• Half an hour bath-time or bedtime reading or tucking LittleBear up with snuggles, or some combination of the above.
• Two hours per evening staring blankly at the goggle-box, or the goggle-phone, or the goggle-laptop. There is generally also wine involved. Sometimes treacle sponge and custard. 
• Half an hour of my own bedtime reading.

This adds up to a daily total of 19 hours, leaving an impressive 5 hours in which to insert all those improving things that I apparently should be doing. Except I haven't included the things I need to do that aren't daily, but still happen - Facetime calls with my family; Zoom meetings with the neighbourhood volunteer network that I'm part of; WhatsApp chats with fellow Mums about what the hell the schoolwork is about this week; making football training videos for my little football team; doing the grocery shopping (prefixed by planning the grocery shopping, which takes almost as long); responding to random administrative emails (frequently football related); attempting to remain in some form of contact with friends and relations; gardening (though we're cultivating more of a "wild" garden this year...); cuddling my precious LittleBear, playing with him, talking to him, reassuring him, cajoling him into brushing his teeth, laughing with him, listening to him.

Oh, and I still need to sleep.



Footnote: Obviously I exaggerate for comic effect. Yes, BigBear is doing some of the above, and no, I am not superwoman, squeezing eleventy-billion hours into one day, it just feels like it.


* Admittedly, just for giggles, I am attempting to do both these things simultaneously, which actually means being a bit shit at both of them. I guess it means I get 4.5 hours a day back for doing other stuff though, doesn't it? That's definitely the way this works.


** No, half an hour a day is not sufficient to keep a three bedroom house, occupied by three humans and one cat 24-hours a day, 7-days a week clean. The house is not clean. But it's not actually a health-hazard yet. Got to set the bar low enough to meet it.

A controversial opinion

Apparently it's VE Day on Friday. The 75th anniversary of VE Day no less. And this is worthy of moving our May Day bank holiday from its traditional slot on a Monday. Why?

I can recall little in the way of celebration 25 years ago, when we passed the 50th anniversary of VE Day. So why is the 75th anniversary suddenly so special?

I can hazard a guess, and it's not one that I think everyone will like.

We are being governed by a right-wing, jingoistic, nationalistic cabal of man-babies who hanker after nanny and Empire. Men who truly, and terrifyingly, believe in British exceptionalism. Men who wish us to all follow them in believing that we are better than those nasty foreigners. Men who fervently want to lead us out of Europe and into the hallowed uplands of Making Britain Great Again. What better way to remind us how great we are, and how exceptional we are, than to ram our Victory in Europe down the population's throat?

This isn't about remembering the war dead -  we have a calm and contemplative Sunday in November for doing that.

This isn't about cherishing peace, or supporting our veterans, or celebrating the ties that bind us to Europe.

This is about the kind of knuckle-dragging "two World Wars and one World Cup" chanting that makes the rest of Europe loathe us so much. This is fuelling nationalism, triumphalism and a tragically misguided believe that we're better than them.

This is about us and them. It's about how we beat them.

This is about manipulating history, distorting the past, and using it to persuade the people that we're somehow special. It is the grotesque lie of British exceptionalism writ large. We are not exceptional. We are no braver or brighter, no more honourable or honest, no more stoic or stalwart, no more courageous, calm or clever than any of our continental neighbours. We are all just people. We have a rich, varied and fascinating history with an expansive literary and artistic heritage. As do other countries. We need to get over ourselves.

If VE Day should mean anything, it should serve to remind us of the ties that bind, of how hard so many nations fought together to bring a lasting peace to Europe. As the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Europe from Nazism dawns, Britain instead sets herself apart, convinced that she is better than the rest of Europe. She is not. She never was, and she never will be. She is just another country.

At a time when that belief in our own innate superiority has seen us refuse to bulk buy PPE with the rest of the EU; fail to initiate a lockdown in a timely manner; fail to test adequately; fail to track infections; fail to protect our front-line workers; and subsequently witness the worst death rates from the pandemic in Europe, now is hardly the time to be beating a drum for ourselves.

It is nothing short of grotesque to persuade the population to "celebrate" Victory in Europe when we are choosing to sever our ties with Europe. What is the message there? Is it that Britain stands alone, always ready to fight the filthy Hun? Is it to not-so-subtly continue to build the comparison of Johnson to Churchill? It is a disgusting display of arrogance and self-delusion at a time when more people have died from COVID-19 than died in the Blitz. Johnson is no Churchill. He has provided only vacuum and vacuity where leadership was needed.

I have never "celebrated" VE Day in the past, and I have no particular desire to do so now. I continue to mourn the fact that we are choosing to leave the Europe that we helped to form from the ashes of the second World War. I will always honour the war dead on Remembrance Day; I will always make sure that my son knows the evils of war and the need to fight for peace; but I will not participate in manufactured national back-slapping, bolstered to foster support for the petty, bigoted Little-Englanders currently leading this country.

Week Five lesson learnt

I have only learnt one thing this week and, as previously, it is a lesson that in my heart of hearts I already knew.

I do not like ironing.

Even five weeks stuck inside the house is not enough to make me crumble and do any ironing. The iron has been out once in that time, and it was to fuse some Hama beads together. The pile of clothes waiting to be ironed still squats, sullen, on a shelf in the bedroom. It grows a little every week, but only a little, as few of my clothes need ironing, especially the ones I wear around the house. Nobody irons their pyjamas anyway do they*?

I have even started disassembling the dining chairs one by one to re-glue the joints and clamp them back together. I would rather learn furniture repairing than iron my own clothes.

I do not think this lesson casts me in the best of lights, but it is what it is.


* This is a joke. I am actually rigorous about getting dressed every morning as though I were going to work. If I didn't I might never actually do any work.
 

Week Four lessons learnt

So apparently I didn't learn anything during week three of lockdown. But on the other hand, we're all alive and fed, so lessons or not, I consider it a success.

Week four on the other hand, despite it only being Thursday is perhaps the pinnacle of my adult life.

A friend posted an amusing meme about the idea of learning things during this peculiar time. I was amused by it, but thought little more of it. Here it is...

Four, yes four, separate friends then commented on this, genuinely wondering if Teapot Lady was me. A fifth friend, entirely independently, messaged me with a copy of this meme to ask if it was me. Closer inspection did reveal a passing resemblance. But, more importantly, it looked quite fun. And I'm nothing if not willing to entertain my friends by making a complete arse out of myself.

(No, I didn't use a bone china teacup. I didn't have faith in not accidentally knocking it over in my exuberance. I may be prepared to make an arse out of myself, but I'm not prepared to break a teacup for you lot.)

Week Two lessons learnt

I'm a bit late in getting round to summarising last week, because it turns out that this working from home, running a household, keeping a child entertained lark takes up about as much energy as I have available every day, and by the time I've crawled through the day to LittleBear's bedtime, I tend to sink, slack-jawed and blank-eyed, onto the sofa, fit for little more than posting pictures of my cat to Facebook.

Fortunately, lesson one this week has been to discover how enduringly popular pictures of cats are on the internet. IdiotCat is developing his own fan club now that I have adopted a habit of posting pictures of Therapeutic Cat Of The Day to my own Facebook feed. I feel as though he and I are adding our tiny droplet to the sum of human happiness. I may not be able to do much, but at least my cat can cheer people up.

Lesson two has been that I have never been particularly disciplined about completing a weekly grocery shop in the past. I have always bought approximately the right stuff, and winged it, safe in the knowledge that I can always pop to the shop in my lunch hour to collect this'n'that, or cycle down to the shop in the evening for extra something or other. Now that I am attempting to minimise trips to the shops, I am having to expend considerably more brainpower on actual planning than I am accustomed to. This will probably be good for me.

Lesson three is the discovery that received wisdom about exercise is correct - it may hurt for the first few days, but if you keep going it gets easier. Who'd have thought the entire world was right on that one? Now that we're on to the start of our third week of Joe Wicks, I'm no longer suffering crippling quadricep pain and am able to walk up and down stairs without wincing. This will probably be good for me.

Lesson four is a lesson of two parts. Firstly, it turns out that ten minutes kneading bread dough is a pretty hefty workout for the arms, especially when one hasn't yet overcome the initial pain of Joe Wicks. Secondly, there is a huge satisfaction in making bread by hand, made even greater by a small boy who declares that he prefers it to supermarket bread. This may be a double-edged sword as, though making and enjoying home made bread is probably good for me, having extra jobs may not be. Next step - teach LittleBear to make bread on his own.

Lesson five is that LittleBear finds large tasks very daunting, but with the right gentle encouragement and support he can achieve sizeable pieces of work and enjoy them. The need to complete my own work has meant that I wasn't realistically able to accept "I can't" as an answer to the suggestion he start a writing task set by his school. Instead I put aside some time each day to chat about it, and help write a plan until he felt able to put pen to paper. Had I not had to work, I might have taken the easier path of saying it didn't matter, and that staying happy and healthy mattered more than doing a particular piece of work. Instead he, and I, discovered together that he can do more than he believes, and he finished the week proud of what he achieved. This will probably be good for both of us.

Lesson six is that technology is what will keep me sane. On Tuesday I had my first "Zoom" Pilates lesson. I've been going to the same Pilates class since 1998, when internet connections were still dial-up and the Nokia 6110 was the height of mobile telephone sophistication. The ability to have the same lesson, with the instructor and friends who have been with me through marriage, divorce, re-marriage, motherhood, depression and more, but in the comfort of my own home, was a chink of normality in an otherwise upside-down world. This will probably be good for me.

It would be an exaggeration to say that lockdown is fun, but in the circumstances, it's currently going better than I imagined it would. And while my exhaustion levels are ensuring that there is as much chance of me doing something "improving" like learning a language or mastering macramé as there is of me becoming an astronaut, I am learning something. I am learning things about myself, and my LittleBear, that should stand me in good stead as we travel through lockdown, and emerge one day on the other side. I am finding that I can live in the moment, particularly when there is little choice. I am not exactly feeling Pollyanna-ish about all of this, but I am feeling better able to cope than I was a week ago. And I've learnt the importance of cute cat pictures.

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.