Lockdown 3.0…. How Team Hindle are coping…
Hello fellow inmates! How are you all doing? Is anyone managing to have any conversation with absolutely anyone else that does not revolve around, include or simply ask “When is this going to fucking end?!?”. No? Me either!
The mornings are the worst when you wake up with a bit of a hangover at the crack of 8.30am and think “NOOOOOO It wasn’t a bad dream…”. So this morning I emailed Boris to pretty much tell him how wrong he was getting it and what it was REALLY like at ground zero. Bet he is so grateful and spending his weekend drawing up my suggestions into laws.
I have also volunteered to help administer the vaccine as I feel I can speed up the process , I used to be in a ladies darts team, and got my new glasses prescription, I can harpoon throw those jabs pretty quick I reckon! Leave it with me and safely book your Easter breaks to Cancun!
Another 2 weeks of lockdown schooling has passed, and it is slipping already, I am thinking, for “Hindle Home School Academy” I am the new headmistress and head of the Governors and PTA, that in this capacity I hold my own meeting and pass a unanimous vote that we have half term early, maybe add in quarter term breaks, accelerate Easter and Summer holidays. SO we essentially finish end of next week and then the holidays should be over by the time lockdown ends so the actual teachers can take back over. Who is in??!!
I think we have covered that I am neither a natural teacher, nor wish to be a teacher… So valiantly we are trying our best. Really the kids deserve the best of someone better, but we are all they have. Poor poor little bastards. We probably would not of had kids if we knew full time childcare would be off the table.
We have learnt the hard way to neither weaponise the boys (remember last lockdown with the Nerf gun?!?) nor to give them anything that is a noise maker. So this week in Music it was required Alex had something musical. We literally drew a blank. Gab mustered up a Coco pops box and 2 straws. Which I thought was really creative!
There has been all manner of requests for things this week, which I am not sure is because the teachers are having a laugh at our expense and like to imagine the panic.. Or whether we are all doing so well they keep raising the bar. Please leave the bar where it is…Please…
This is what happened when Alex was required to have 12 “counters”. I live in an active busy house (well my kids are destructive messy little B….lessings and I will deal with it at the point we need to move house…), so cannot simply lay my hands on 12 identical things! We are lucky if we have 6 plates to eat off and have a meal all at the same time!!
Very lucky the Nespresso arrived, or we were all going to have to line up with our socks off for Sebs maths class.
One request for art was “oil paints”. That was abso fucking lutely hilarious… The school know my boys, they are not allowed a pen, chalk, ink, paint or playdoh — they cannot be trusted. Give them a wipe clean fibre tip and we would have to redecorate the whole house. Once, ONCE they were allowed playdoh and we had to Karcher the sodding patio as they rubbed it in every hole. Last time they discovered the joy of Art Alex drew a picture on the car with a stone.
Oil paints?!?!? HA HA HA HA HA. NO. Just NO.
So we had some scratch paper and Alex wrote a letter to me.
Alex has continued with his love of Joe Wicks…. and has moved off laying face down on the rug, because I strongly suspect there is something hidden in it that is sticky and should not be there….It smells a bit funny…But noone can be bothered to investigate so we have just placed an order on Amazon for Yankee candles instead. Who cares, not like anyone is popping over!
Seb is doing well, he has only cried twice in the last 2 weeks due to being asked to write something. I was deliberating putting together a montage of tears but thought that putting up photos of his distress would not be kind. But that is today… Who knows how far they will have pushed me by Easter!
Loads and loads of muddy walking in muddy fields, mixing it up by sometimes walking in a different direction, trying to take the homeschooling outside, marching off all determined to do some good learning n shit.
Which generally ends in carnage and Alex falling in a mud pit.
We try to mix it up (for our own amusement) by adding a hunger games style element.
Today I put Seb and the dog on one side of the big ditch and I had a blissfully quiet walk on my own on the other side. They were told if they could get to me then they could come home with me. If not they would have to fight it out between them about who ate who and who survived the night.
Invaluable life lessons I like to think.
Emily is supposed to be old enough to homeschool herself. And so we trust that she is learning ok, logged on to where she should be, when she should be logged on.
Fucking idiots we are. She spent 2 periods of school and her lunch break teaching herself how to take her hoodie off using only 1 of her feet….
She also got a Henna kit for Christmas and spent a quality day tattooing her own face during her zoom lessons whilst dressed like a giant slice of pizza.
Not sure whether to be worried and more closely parent as we found what looks like a blood diamond and a USB stick in her holiday purse in her bedroom (you know, when I was doing that parent thing of checking her drawer for dirty washing…). Remember last lockdown she set up a secret TikTik account and by the summer had over 5 millions likes, 2 millions followers and had become a brand ambassador for 3 different product lines. Actually I still do not know what her TikTok name is….
Derek and I though in reality are not the best role models for sensible behaviour, so to tell the kids would be a bit “the dog calling the cats arse hairy”, Derek has spent this week trying to teach the dog to bring him a bottle opener when called. It is not going well.
Also to amuse himself he has asked I photo his head every few days as he would like a record of “quiff watch” during lockdown to see how large it can get.
I have discovered Alcohol free Gin, I thought I would give it a go and see if it helped me drink less. Alas it has not worked and I am now going to have to ween myself of it as drink it all the time… All. The. Time. And now actually rather than wanting a G&T around 6pm (ok who am I kidding, around 3pm, do not judge me..) have one instead of a morning coffee.
As usual we are trying to make our own fun at the weekends, have a laugh, try to put some differentiation between week and weekend in our own special way. And this last weekend it was Dereks birthday!! I am really bad at making cakes. And I ordered some fun stuff to stick on the top but the icing went wrong, so the only other thing I had to fill the space was a joke edible cake topper of the neighbours face that we had made up for a party that never happened due to lockdown.
I also missed the instructions about splitting the cake mixture into 2… So made the cake twice, and it was almost a foot high.
Our amazing Australian Au Pair had never heard of a Chav, nor a Kebab, so we decided to order the whole family shell suits, get Greasy Kebab delivered, and have a chav party!
Emily said that with my hair scraped back I looked younger and my face was less saggy. Yes she actually complimented me on how my “Croydon facelift” suited me.
We themed the night with drinks also, and found some of this beauty which I used to drink all the time in my miss spent “yoof”.
Oh the gallons of this I would sink, with 2020 (the irony!), and white lightening. Never used to affect me, I could get drunk on this 3 nights a week, and bound out of bed looking like a Disney princess ready for my part time job fresh as a daisy!
Those days are long long behind me. There was no Croydon facelift elastic band strong enough to help me last weekend….
As time goes on the house is feeling smaller and smaller, and everyone is spreading out trying to claim more space. Like that algae on the surface of the water that chokes the life below… with me being the life below…encroaching on my space. I used to work from home alone and everyone would be out, now everyone is in MY space and I have to move around and find somewhere to sit.
Had to get creative…
It drives me insane, although very handy at some points…! I am considering applying for any Key Worker jobs, like anything, an incontinent 90 year old mans personal bum wiper for example as it will get me out of home schooling and out of the house!!
So this weekend, what are we up to… ?Of course we had the usual japes (which are really fucking wearing thin now…) of “Oh lets go to the pub/cinema/clubbing/mini break!” Chortle chortle. The reality is one lucky person gets to go to Sainsburys/Asda/Waitrose/Tesco/The pharmacy for pile medicine.
When in reality we are setting up our own Guinea Pig Beauticians!! It is literally mind boggling what you can order on Amazon and find out on the internet! We have our own Guinea Pig trimming set thanks to Prime, and watched a tutorial on YouTube. Captain America is, well, he is the Guinea pig for the guinea pigs (poor little dude has been buggered into permanent submission thanks to Janets constant “hugs”) as he is the most placid. A few Strongbows and off we go!
What can possibly go wrong with this?!?
And there we go, another week, another week closer to it ending. Another week closer to me needing rehab, and to buy even more stretchy clothing, and paying for additional therapy for my children.
Have a lovely weekend everyone! Am saying that and trying to stay so motivated, as I do not know about you, but if you start to allow yourself to feel down you spiral and that is no good for anyone….but really really am feeling like…
But as Gloria says — WE WILL SURVIVE!! (Hopefully Gloria, unless you are 90, obese, diabetic and have breathing problems…..)
I am amusing myself with finding really random Instagram accounts… And here is a snippet from one of my current faves.
So many questions….!