Things They Never Taught Us in NCT Classes No: 1,892:
How to parent in a pandemic. 

Lockdown 1.0 March 2020

An insect struggles to keep afloat in the unused paddling pool. I can relate.

The pool was inflated in those unusually warm and optimistic spring days of the first couple of weeks of lockdown – rainbows were drawn on the window, lego was built, the washing was on the line by 9am each morning and the general morale was that of ‘we got this’. A couple of weeks later and we most certainly did not ‘got this’. The pool was one of those that took half a day to fill and was used perhaps once, maybe twice, before the lure of YouTube and gaming became too strong.

I sit outside in the glorious sunshine thinking about all the things I should be doing, that I’m not. 

My work has dried up. Theatres are shut so they have no need for design, and now the kids are indefinitely off school, I’m not sure I would be able to work anyway, with two kids to ‘teach’ and bagfuls of shopping to disinfect – plus the 24hr cafe I now seem to be running. I wonder if I will be able to resurrect my business again after a global pandemic. I’ve already done it twice after two kids but I’ve had no experience in post-pandemic business do-overs.

They’ve eaten all the bloody snacks again. Record time.

I somehow manage to meet my friends on a zoom call each morning at 9.30am for a quick Hiit session. It raises my spirits. Who knows what the bench mark is for depression in a pandemic? My days are a long list of things I’m not. I’m not a teacher, I’m not a good cleaner, I’m not a good housewife, and I am definitely not a good mum at the moment. After weeks of spending every waking hour with my kids, I feel like I wear my nerves on the outside of my body and the smallest brush against me has my shoulders up past my ears again.

YES, I love them to the ends of the earth, but after the 14th hour of bored children I just need some space. Mummy has two children, if one child gets on 24 of her nerves and the other child gets on 48 of them, how many gins does Mummy need each night to get by? 

I’ve given up homeschooling.

We are lucky because we haven’t had Covid. Even luckier our parents didn’t get it – we haven’t seen them for months now because we were too scared we might give it to them. The kids talk to their grandparents on the portal and read stories to them. They apply filters to entertain themselves as we have no news. We haven’t been anywhere. The weeks are marked by claps for carers and The Repair Shop - another week of nothing chalked off.

Clap for Boris? Jog on.

We have a holiday in August and it feels normal. It feels wrong going on holiday when we haven’t seen our family, but we can’t go together and seeing them and not hugging them feels too upsetting. Manchester has been in lockdown for longer than anywhere else. We aren’t allowed in peoples houses for the majority of the year – or rather we were for one morning and then they changed their minds again. I can’t remember the last time I sat on someone else’s sofa.

I trawl TikTok curating funnies to put on Instagram Stories. 

I used to watch as the dog walkers walked down our road on their government sanctioned exercise and feel jealous. It must be nice to have a dog. At the end of summer we get a dog. I was right, it is nice having a dog.

Lockdown 2.0 Nov 2020

The numbers are rising again. They say that winter is coming. It's been winter all year. Christmas is reduced to one day, we weren’t risking seeing anyone anyway, but the echo of people’s plans falling through rings loud in the air. 

Lockdown 3.0 Jan 2021

The kids aren’t going back to school. 

DID YOU HEAR ME? We are here again. The anger in me swells on an hourly basis. How are we here again, this isn’t fair. I need them to go back. Its winter, there’s LITERALLY nothing to do except screen hour upon screen hour. I need to work this time, and they need to do school. The expectations on all of us is much higher, as if last year was some sort of trial run and we are all experts at it now. We’re not.

I am busy at work after months of nothing and it feels joyous – I absolutely love my job – and I can’t wait for the daily fight of morning school to give way to a quick lunch, and onto the ‘entertain yourself’ part of the day (also knows as 5 solid hours of iPad). No, we won’t be joining the story time zoom at 3.15pm, we are trying to keep our businesses afloat.

They go back to school in March and it doesn’t feel like the relief I thought it would. I am genuinely traumatised from spending so much time with my family. I guess it didn’t kill us, so that makes us stronger, right? We have never been so close and yet felt so distant.

In years to come maybe I will remember the fun times we had: the lip-syncing video we made for school, the halloween party and film night in the back of a van because we couldn’t trick-or-treat, the cooking with cubs over zoom, the YouTube pub quizzes, the late nights, the drinks in parks, the bike rides, the walks and the joy of coffee shops reopening. But not yet. Not quite.