Page 7 - BWS_Bury69_Web

Our rules
of home
schooling
School shutdowns, exam cancellations and Easter break saw our brood
endure a month of educational sloth-dom. (All stepped up to this
particular plate with remarkable aplomb). Whilst duly pardoned from end of year revision cramming, they are now entrenched in various degrees of home- schooling.
Their ages dictate that BB and I do not have to guide them through their online lessons. God forbid we parents cramp their ‘screen space’.
However, motivating them to adhere to a virtual programme is a new challenge in itself. The daily mantra at HQ is as follows. No, it is not acceptable to tune in to your physics lesson in a onesie nor engage in zoom chats with your tutor, from your bed. As to muting your teacher mid lesson, turning off your camera and diverting your studies to your insta-feed and Tik-toks? (Yes - Big Mother is watching). This is worthy of a parental detention that will entail all my washing up be done, by proxy, until lockdown is lifted. Every Corona cloud....
My ‘rebel’ mum
is isolating with
Bergerac
Stuck en masse at HQ, we are all secretly wishing for a few days of solitary confinement.
However, with grandparents in mind, we are acutely aware of the repercussions of this pandemic for those whose ‘vulnerable status’ sees them forced into weeks of social isolation.
My 76 year old mother is in enviably fine fettle. Frustratingly, on the ‘box tick’ of age alone, diktats decree that she be confined to her first floor flat. In a brilliant act of defiance, she recently broke curfew and dashed, in hat and dark glasses, to the local garden centre to buy up their jigsaw puzzle stash.
This year for Mother’s Day I sent her box sets of Morse and Bergerac. Hopefully, in absence of family, her historic television crushes will help see her through the lows of incarceration.
Never
a dull moment
The joys, trials and bemusing encounters of a West Suffolk mum
Tales from the trolley dash
HQ in lockdown is shaping up to be a somewhat bewildering experience. What began with me laughing
incredulously at anecdotes of mad people panic buying loo roll, rapidly morphed into, well, me, that mad person, panic buying loo roll.
In the initial hysteria that stripped the supermarket shelves bare, I pondered upon whether I had missed something. Was Andrex actually an edible food source? (Best Beloved has always maintained his school semolina resembled papier-mache).
Who could have predicted that in scenes reminiscent of an Ikea sofa-sale brawl, even the most slothful could morph into mad March hares in the race to grab a gold-plated pack of penne.
On the bright side, my abysmally failed nod to Veganuary ensured my larder was initially brimming with baked beans and lentils. My eco-warrior daughter is also, courtesy of our cabin fevered status, still in raptures over our newly flatlined carbon footprint.
Grocery trips have become, whisper it, a secretly relished break from house
arrest. (There are, I have discovered, only so many times one can walk the dog before she performs a sit down protest).
Waiting for hours in line to purchase that essential pint of milk (or as lockdown continues, gin) is a bizarre mix between being plunged into the pages of an Orwellian novel and showcasing what we British do best - queuing. Bar the new rules of strict adherence to one way systems, polite trolley dodging and awareness that once picked and squeezed, NO avocado must EVER be returned to the shelf, I have found it strangely relaxing.
Feeding the six locust-like “quaran- teens” has called for much apologetic muttering to the cashier as I routinely pile the conveyor belt high with what may be regarded as a blatant abuse of ‘essential grocery’ etiquette.
I confess to once smuggling in another household member with whom to flout the rules and split the trolley ‘shame’.
Thankfully, being a teenager, she had zero problem with feigning complete ignorance of her mother and social distancing from me, the moment we hit the public domain.
7