For the past ten weeks or so (I have lost count), I have done my best to keep myself and my children entertained. They’ve done their schoolwork, regardless of tears and tantrums. They’ve grown plants from seed, learned new skills and read numerous books. Mini Seymour’s hair has grown, Boy has a tan, and the girls have sorted through the junk in their bedrooms.
We have made veggie planters and raised beds. We’ve painted furniture, groomed guinea pigs and rescued wildlife. We have brushed our teeth, made photo books, started novels and painted pictures. We’ve written to friends, updated the mortgage and the house insurance and learned how to Zoom.
We have swum in the pool, run or cycled almost daily, stopped biting our nails and done sit-ups. Musical instruments have been played. Many languages have been spoken, and we’ve danced together as a family.
Yay us.
Now. Let me translate.
As far as schoolwork is concerned, I am a teacher. I am also a harridan, and so my kids were never going to get away without doing that. I mean, what else do they have to do? It keeps them busy. The seeds, yes, they planted them. But they didn’t later select the strong ones, pot and plant them on and water them. The kids’ involvement was minimal, to be fair.
As for learning new skills? The Four Little Seymours can now work Minecraft like pros. But only if they read their books first. In theory.
Mini Seymour’s hair has grown. It is definitely longer. But it is also scraggy and messy, and she has taken to sucking it.
Boy does have a tan, but only because he has a tantrum every time he gets a whiff of sun cream. And as for the girls’ rooms? Yes, they sorted them out, so why do they still look like municipal dumping facilities?
Big Seymour made a vegetable planter. It’s rather good. And the girls decorated it (daubed it with paint), and then we filled it with soil. Big Seymour chose to overlook the fact that we’d grown tomato plants from seed, and went out and bought some ready-grown, thereby metaphorically stabbing me in the heart with a blunt fork. (Over-reaction, I know. But…)
Painting furnture? Yes! We have. Between us, Little Seymour Number One and I made a £1 tin of grey paint cover a dresser, a bed frame, a dressing table and a bookcase. But my dressing table is peeling, and the dresser could do with another coat, which it will never get, owing to the fact the paint was a one-off mix from a rejection pile in Brewers.
The guinea pigs will not win best in any show after they’ve been trimmed with blunt scissors, and the wildlife we’ve rescued has all died. The children have only brushed their teeth when I have nagged them eighty times and sniffed their breath, and I may have completed one photo book, but I have about fifty yet to create. Novels? Why do I bother. And as for painting pictures, I tried to create a portrait of Little Seymour Number Two. The poor child was quite offended when it turned out I have completely lost my touch, and presented her with a sketch of a chubby-faced, ugly, alien boy.
We have written letters to friends – good, old-fashioned letters. But after I asked Boy to write a note to an old man in a care home, I was unable to send it, for it was full of self-pity and lamentations after I’d asked him to actually use a pen. I can’t see how that particular piece of correspondence would have brought cheer to anyone.
The mortgage is sorted, likewise the home insurance. But I know not if I have done the right thing, what with the market and interest rates so unpredictable at the moment. So any self-congratulation on being organised enough to achieve this may well prove premature, and I’ll be cursing.
We can use Zoom. Yes, we can. But in my experience, it is fraught with danger. I don’t like it. It’s bad for one’s self-esteem.
We have been lucky to be able to swim. Four strokes at a time. And when it comes to our daily exercise, it is compulsory that we have at least half an hour of arguments, puncture issues and helmet refusals before we even leave the premises.
The nail biting statement is an out-and-out lie.
Little Seymour Number Two practises her trumpet once every ten days. Boy played the recorder last week. Then I hid it.
The main language we have been speaking is cuss, with a hint of French thrown in. And we did manage to produce a TikTok video, after two hours of arguments, as certain people kept on getting it wrong. It was inordinately stressful.
The success of one’s lockdown life is, therefore, subject to the perspective you take, and the mood you are in. I find myself doing OK one minute, then panicking that this is going to last forever, feeling low, then classically “pulling myself together” and realising I am lucky in so many ways. It’s been fine overall, but my kids really, really, really need to get back to school…
We will remember this time fondly, I’m sure, but… only if it ends soon!
Bugger off, Corona Virus.
(Not my finest effort.)
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