Surviving Week One

WELL. The first week has been quite the baptism of fire. Anyone else? I feel like a different person to the one from this time last week. That first day. I don't even want to think of it. All my gusto, bravado and let's face it, massive naiveté from last week disappeared pretty much within the first few hours of Monday morning.

The teenage girls decided to plant their laptops at the kitchen table and work from there. The husband decided to hide work in the study and needed QUIET at all times in order for this to be a suitable work environment. The youngest girls were exceedingly eager learners for the first half an hour, as we squeezed in the spaces left at the kitchen table, and then their exuberance wholly dissipated leaving me trying to bring the energy for us all. (Like all those family photos where dispirited/angry children are refusing to smile at the camera but the mother is so desperate for a lovely family photo she tries to smile enough for the whole family and looks slightly unhinged. Have you seen them? We have plenty of those. It is a near impossible task to try and get seven people looking at the camera and smiling. Although we did manage one beautiful family photo a few years ago, because I was secretly whispering hideous threats of physical violence, through gritted teeth, to the child who was trying to ruin it for us all - the result is a very flattering photo of me surrounded by a husband and all children facing mainly the right way, with troublesome child not smiling, but looking in the right direction with an innocuous expression on his face which is a total win.)

That left me with the boys. They had clearly envisaged spending entire days on their screens so were slightly upset to discover the Timetable (drawn up by my organised older child who is the Saffy to my disorganised Edina) banned screens from 9am to 4pm. And their silence-needing father had imposed a PS4 ban until 5pm, when he would finish for the day. The older boy, G, is very like his late grandfather and excellent at keeping hidden out of the way, so much so you can almost forget he is even there. G executed this to a T and would disappear with a work task until I suddenly remembered his existence several hours later, and run up to his bedroom to try and catch him out, but he would invariably hear me on the stairs and arrange himself in to a suitable 'I'm being a conscientious worker' pose so I would have to concede the point. He would emerge at the designated 'break times' and make a big song and dance over finding the timetable so he could verify that this was 'free' time and I was therefore unable to ask him to do anything. Second son, Ted, just wanted to get everything done as quickly as possible and would rush through it all in a half arsed, half hearted manner just to shut me up and so he could go back to whining about how much longer before he could go 'on a screen'. What I desperately needed was a TA. Or in fact four. Six children to one unqualified teacher was definitely the wrong ratio.

The primary school is sending the younger three children daily work which I dutifully print out every morning and then spend the designated 'work' hours on the timetable, trying to get through. That first day the tasks felt endless. By Friday we were doing a very 'me' version of the work and picking and choosing the best bits. Far from needing to worry about the days dragging, they seemed to race by and I started to panic that we wouldn't be able to fit in all the work in time for our Family Game session in the afternoon. It is very important we get that in on time, because as soon as the game element is over, they are allowed back on screens and the blissful silence that ensues (and the gin) is the only thing that keeps me going through the day and the almost CONSTANT 'Muuuuuuummmmmms' I have to endure. I swear there is a sensor that is linked to all of our loos, and the minute I manage to sneak off for a wee and my cheeks hit the seat, an alarm sounds somewhere in the house - like the old fashioned bell system that sounded in the staff quarters of stately homes - the bell sounds and a child will start with 'MUUUMMM'. I never answer the first one, in case they lose interest. This rarely works. So the 'Mumming' continues. And then the same old pattern - I answer, they don't hear. Mum? Yes, Mum? YES. MUUMMM?  YESSSSSSS! MUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM?  WHAT DO YOU BLOODY WANT I AM ON THE LOO!! They then continue talking to me as if i'd said, 'absolutely my precious dumpling, tell me what is troubling you, I'm all ears!'

In amongst the tantrums, the storming off, the tears, the placating, me endlessly saying 'hang on' - 'in a minute' - 'there's only one of me', the mess, the endless food preparation and the twice daily loading and emptying of the dishwasher, there have definitely been highlights. By day two, the big girls had realised that working in the chaos of the kitchen was a rookie mistake and found a way to make it work in their room. I decided to write off the youngest as collateral damage and basically let her play her 'long game' (which involves babies and handbags) all day with a little bit of reading and some counting thrown in. I allowed G to stay hidden for the best part of the day with only a few shouts up the stairs to ask what he was up to. This freed me up to focus on getting through the work with Ted and Cybs, aged 10 and 7 respectively. This worked. And as all breaks were taken outside in the beautiful Spring sunshine, I was able to clean up the mess left in the house with them all outside annoying our neighbours. I even managed to squeeze in some of my work. I felt like Erin Brockovich. On Wednesday afternoon we organised a 'whole school' rounders game up at the (empty) village sports field and took our home made cake with us as a snack to enjoy afterwards. That felt like a huge win. By Thursday I was desperate for the school work emails to stop coming and by Friday I had a horrible realisation that the school emails would indeed stop coming during the Easter holidays and then I would be responsible for finding ways to keep everyone amused, all day, every day. I started searching for trampolines. But it would appear I missed the memo which told everyone else to buy one which means all the reasonably priced, reasonably sized trampolines are all sold out. They will just have to learn to jump up and down on the grass with gusto.

However, I remain determinedly upbeat about it all. I have much to be thankful for and I am all too aware of our luck. My eldest, Bea doesn't take her GCSEs until next year (we hope....) and she managed to get to her much longed for ski trip before all the madness kicked off. Her best friend in all the world, and our surrogate 6th child, A, was delivered to us before the lockdown and so will be staying with us for the forseeable. (It is exceedingly serendipitous that her name begins with an A as the first letter of our girls' first names are in order, B, C and D. 'A' joining the fold is clearly meant to be). They have known each other since they started school in London aged 4 and have been a huge part of one another's life ever since and A has come to stay with us in almost every holiday since we moved to Suffolk five years ago. She is an only child and the idea of endless months stuck in the house, whilst her parents worked from home and attempted to navigate a house move (now on hold obviously) was enough to make our noisy and chaotic house look like a very attractive prospect. I'm also thankful that my husband, K is an employee and able to work from home, so we will still be receiving an income - for now at least. My work for a Dementia website has been all but stopped but I am able to do the odd few hours to keep a trickle of income coming in, and as another plus, our only expenses now seem to be food and electricity so I'm hoping my outgoings diminish in equal proportion to my incomings. That is the hope anyway.

My main outgoing BC (Before Corona), used to be petrol for the car which is clearly no longer a concern. Last year we upgraded our family car (which is actually just 'my' car that K occasionally drives. He gets to travel around in his car which can conveniently only fit two small children on the back seats, or one larger child if they have legs) to an 8 seater, long wheel based van. I am utterly in love with it, but like the rest of my loves, it is bloody high maintenance. It has needed more trips to the garage in the year that we have had it, than my old Ford Galaxy did in ten years of ownership. I have already had to replace all of the tyres. And every time I turn the key it beeps several angry demands at me. 'Low Fuel' (stop trying to push your luck with this you bloody fool), 'Park Assist not working' (take me to the sodding garage again you lazy bitch) and my least favourite of all - 'Only 550 miles of Ad Blue Left' (AGAIN). I find this incomprehensible. Who invented this warning system? Why does it need to warn you so far in advance? The warning light and message start annoying me at around 800 miles to go. WHO in, the developed world, sets off on a journey of many hundred miles without the prospect of a service station en route so might need reminding that they could conceivably get caught short? It's not even possible to drive for several hundred miles anywhere in the United Kingdom without finding a petrol station. Why does it need to be so needy? At around 'only' 300 miles it starts beeping at me mid journey, telling me the engine won't start in T-300 miles. WHO needs to think that far in advance? It is just not in my DNA. I hate filling up with diesel as it is. I never fill up the tank as I hate the money leaving my account so I only ever put £30 in at a time which I feel is a reasonable amount to 'lose'. It does mean that I visit the petrol station far more often but who cares.

In summary, we survived the first week. The children learnt a bit. We enjoyed our mandated exercise hour. Gin helped. Also, I haven't even managed to tell you all the blissful ways Marie was proved wrong during this week. I shall save that for next time. I sincerely hope you are all surviving too and not drowning under the weight of Whatsapp Group messages (STOP THE MADNESS), School emails, searches for a usable pencil/pen, coronavirus updates and yells of MUUUUMMMMMM and or DAAAAAAADDDDD (depending on who the default setting is in your house - in ours, I am default setting, back up setting and emergency contact. DAADDD is only used to find out if their playstation ban is up or if he has finished in the study so they can go back on the Playstation.)

A tout a l'heure mes amis xxxxx

Love In The Time of Corona

There is nothing like a deadly global pandemic to make you feel like a proper arse for complaining about having to 'endure' three and a half weeks of having no internet. Now it feels like the smallest inconvenience one could possibly imagine.

So here we all are, in this peculiar new 'normal'. I feel like I have been through all the stages of grief trying to come to terms with it all. I was heavily in to denial. I definitely ticked off anger. I spent Friday, the last day of school, in tears. From the moment I woke up, I just couldn't stop myself. The tears fell regardless of the reassurance, the need for me to 'pull myself' together, I couldn't stop them. I cried for normality, I cried for the children not seeing their friends or beloved teachers, for me not seeing my friends, for all of us trying to live and work together as I couldn't see for the life of me how that would work, I cried for the worry about lives, livelihoods, lost opportunities and the lack of control I had over any of it. And then, on Saturday, I awoke ready to accept it all. To isolate, to admit we couldn't go on our longed for trip away in April, that our 17th wedding Anniversary, would pass as the last one, unmarked and uncelebrated. I am not one to panic, so my natural reaction to people panicking is to get cross with them for being so dramatic. I reasoned with my panic buying mother that she was being irrational, I was cross with people who tried to tell me that schools would close 'indefinitely' and I argued that it wasn't worth all the fuss and we all had to get it anyway so we should just jolly well keep calm and carry on. But now, I am here, with 6 children (an extra I will explain in due course) and a husband, within our house and garden, for what could be months and months and months and months to come. 

I am still all over the place with my feelings about this bizarre situation. Even though I have accepted it as the new reality, I'm not always able to keep my thoughts under control. I feel like Rapunzel in the Disney film Tangled, when she finally leaves the tower. I swing from being petrified and worried, to being full of hope and optimism. In my wildest times I envisage the coming months, as the sun begins to shine, like a wonderful version of The Waltons. Except Waltons' Mountain is replaced with a much smaller brick house with a fairly modest sized garden. And there are only 6 children, and John Walton in our version works on a laptop in the study rather than the land. And there are no grandparents. But you get the idea. I imagine a time of togetherness, love, sibling play, outdoor adventures and singing around the campfire. I imagine me teaching them the piano, the violin, reading, writing and extremely basic languages and maths whilst baking wonderfully delicious things for them all to enjoy at meal times as we chat and laugh and bask in the sepia toned glow of our time together. I imagine me helping my dyslexic children advance exponentially with their writing, with my sons realising they are in fact best friends and finding all sorts of fun adventures to enjoy together, with my husband learning to live with us all, 24/7 (which he has only ever managed in very small doses). In my more realistic moments, I realise that when it rains, when we are officially confined to our home with only specified times out to gather food and supplies, the boys will physically fight one another, everyone will always be hungry, there will be a constant worry about screen time, I will shout at all the mess, my husband will shout at all the mess, I will take against him shouting about the exact same thing I shouted about, because he did it differently and louder, and then there will be slammed doors, tears and potentially desperation as nobody can know just how long this will all last.

For now, I am trying to maintain my usual optimism and think of all the good stuff. I shall try and pass these on to help spread my optimism as the weeks roll on and we all get slightly madder and madder. Here we go: 

Reasons To Be Cheerful No. 1. Marie Kondo was WRONG. Never, in the history of my 41 years, have I been more pleased to prove someone wrong. IN YOUR FACE ANTI-HOARDERS. I must have known that one day, we would face a worldwide disaster confining us all to our homes. Because under the roofs of this house and the garage, is more than enough stuff and clutter to keep us entertained indefinitely. Want to know what the older 2 were studying in the last term of year 5? Not a problem. Let me delve in to my pile of stuff people told me I should throw away - et voila! 2 sets of school books from 3 and 5 years ago for me to use. Want to glue stuff? Stick stuff? Roller skate around the kitchen dressed as a peach? (you laugh but this has already happened) not a problem! I have skates for at least 4 children which haven't been touched in years and a dressing up catalogue that has been collected over 15 years. I have old tights, socks, balls of wool and redundant inserts to cushions - anyone for a sock creature or an octopus? I have old clothes the older ones can rip up and repurpose, I have boxes and boxes of lego that have remained unloved, unused and bringing joy to nobody but the dust particles for years on end, but now, that lego will have the last laugh as it emerges victorious in to the light of extreme boredom and desperate home-schooling parents. Old reading books, learning targets from 2012, egg boxes, jam jars, stickers, boxes of cold and flu tablets and abandoned lemsip sachets (filled with paracetamol) etc - all here. I'm WINNING MARIE. I am loving the idea of her sitting at home, with her clear surfaces, empty cupboards and only joyful-bringing clothes feeling the error of her ways. Want a sock puppet Marie? TOUGH. You don't have the stuff you need. Want to know what you were doing on March 20th when you were 15? TOUGH you don't have your Purple Ronnie Diary from 1993 to find out. She who laughs last, laughs longest. Mwa ha ha ha ha. I mean I am still wondering how to fully utilise the odd shoes, broken headphones and weird leads to things I cannot fathom, but I will, don't you worry. To my sister who told me to 'order a skip and empty my house in to it', to my mother, who has bemoaned my hoarding ways (whilst simultaneously being a hoarder herself) I say IN YOUR FACE. And THAT brings me joy Ms Kondo. 

RTBC No. 2. I have spent the longest time wishing I could spend my days in my beloved loungewear, (drinking gin from breakfast through to bedtime but let's not focus on that part yet) and now my greatest wish has come true. I was born for this. My long suffering husband despairs of my wonderful collection of comfy casuals and rightly so. My latest and most loved pair of pink, velour, baggy trousers are the stuff of stylish nightmares. I look like a very badly dressed, rotund, golden girl who has given up on life. But to me, they are pure joy. They are soft. And 'Shnuggly'. And back in the normal days, my greatest desire from the moment I awoke was to get to the part of the day when I could be reunited with them. They are so stroke-able and comfortable it is mind blowing. My youngest grabs on to my leg when I wear them and strokes them and sighs whilst inviting anyone she can to 'stroke mummy'. I could put on 4 stone and they would still fit. And I got them for £4 from a Sale rail in Sainsburys when they had an extra 20% off special. I mean, what is not to love! Combined with any member of my exquisite shnuggly sock collection, they are comfort at its most extreme. Now I don't have to wrench them off to do the second school run in the morning (I almost always wear them to drop the older ones at school first), I can wear them morning, noon and night, safe in the knowledge that nobody will ever surprise me at home and catch me wearing them. What pure delight! 

RTBC No. 3 PE Kits. My second child is a slightly (very) disorganised boy who has a penchant for losing things. Superdry/Topshop coats, phones, water bottles, phone chargers and PE Kits top his list of preferred items to lose. By the time it got to the 3rd PE Kit which has to be purchased from a specific shop in town at a cost of £24 a time, I decided that there would only be one PE kit going forward and that he and his sister would share it. I cannot tell you the number of mornings this rash decision caused drama, anger and at times, physical fights. However for the forseeable future, worrying about who had the PE kit last and whether its smell would be noticeable enough to worry about, is a thing of the past. HUZZAH! From now on, we have Joe Wicks at 9am every morning, online ballet classes a go go thanks to all the girls and one boy's classes now being 'remote' and we can do it all, wearing whatever we want. BLISS.

I am also cheerful that today is mother's day, because for the first time in what could be years, I got to stay in bed and fall back to sleep until a mammoth 10am. This hasn't happened, well, ever I think. So I am feeling discombobulated from the extra sleep and the weird 'it's Sunday but nobody is leaving tomorrow' feeling but also thankful that I have enjoyed a 'proper' mother's day of rest, chocolates and being able to sit and write. So, to all the mothers/mother figures and just all round wonderful women - past, present and future - let's all be kind to ourselves and sit back in our ugly velour comfy trousers and eat our Lindt chocolate whilst we make our way through every Neflix series that has ever been invented and gradually learn to hate our optimistic home schooling timetables we drew up in the early days of isolation thinking we had it 'sorted'. I say, as long as we all survive and Marie admits she was wrong, that is plenty good enough. 

Dark Ages

HELLO! and welcome one and all. Welcome back to those who have followed me from Mother and Other of SE23 (I sincerely apologise for the prolonged absence).  There is much to catch up on. But there is little time for introductions and catching up right now, wherever you have come from, as I am currently experiencing the very worst suffering a human can imagine. Yes, that is correct, I am now NEARLY A MONTH in to a life with no internet. (Let that sink in). YES, I have been surviving, just like Beyonce, and I have made it through 23 full days of not being able to work, not being able to ask Alexa anything, not being able to plant my beloved cherubs in front of a screen and let them loose on You Tube or Fortnite, not being able to catch up on The Split and The Pottery Throw Down and absolutely no NETFLIX.  It is an almost unimaginable horror. 

As you might be able to imagine, as well as a sharp drop in my income, and a sharp rise in extortionate data ‘add ons’ from unscrupulous network providers (I shall NEVER again complain about my broadband charges - it is a pittance in comparison to trying to access the internet via the magic of 4G) there have been other, very unwelcome side effects. One: the children have interacted with each other. This sounds delightful and even advantageous - but one of the biggest myths of modern parenting is that the internet is terrible. It is not. I am here to tell you that five children without the internet is a thing of utter horror. The children range in age from 4 to 15 and without the wonderful wonders of that magnificent World Wide Web they congregate together in small packs, fighting, bickering and worst of all - playing games together. SURE it sounds idyllic and ‘like the old days’ but really, playing is just an excuse to make a world of mess, injure each other with the almost indisputable excuse of ‘play’, cry about various injustices/cheating in board games and the NOISE.  

The headphones the children wear make the internet silent. There are no headphones for the children playing. The noise often reaches cacophonous levels and I, ill equipped to deal with such technological short comings, have had to live with that noise, morning and night (ALL hail the invention of school, my only saving grace). Without the internet to separate them, they seem to enjoy congregating in one room.  There are a number of rooms in this house. It isn’t huge but with the internet working, it is plenty big enough. Without the internet it feels half the size. The running, squealing and physical fighting (with swords - I am not over egging this - ACTUAL large wooden swords) has driven me to the brink. Obviously I am not anti-play  - I can see the beauty in it - I'm just not used to it happening so much in such a confined area. With three weeks of storms and rain, it has felt particularly hard work and the constant clean up has really taken its toll. Although it has taught me that I clearly rely on the internet a little too much so going forward, I may incorporate a few internet free weekend sessions so we can enjoy some good old fashioned, 'fun' family time. Actually to be honest, I really do not enjoy playing board games with them. I appreciate that with a few older children it could be fun, but with various ages and personalities to accommodate, playing Cluedo becomes less a fun activity and more an exercise in diplomacy, patience, tolerance and fight resolution.

I have clearly been labouring under a wildly false apprehension that I was ‘coping’ with the whole parenting malarkey. I am often told ‘ooh, I don’t know how you do it’ - but here is the thing - I AM CLEARLY NOT. I am a modern parent and as such I am used to instant things - downloading any free film they fancy watching, whenever I want to keep them quiet; whatsapp messages; asking Alexa for help with homework and announcing that it’s supper time; earning money from the comfort of my own home in the joyous silence of the school day; sitting in separate rooms to my husband as he watches Netflix in one room and I catch up on my terrible TLC (it’s a sky channel that is solely made up of real life programmes such as Say Yes To The Dress, My 600lb life, 90 Day Fiancé before the 90 days, Outdaughtered, Dr Pimple Popper, My Big Fat Fabulous Life etc etc etc) addiction in the other. We can’t even use our printer as it relies upon the hallowed wifi.  

The only advantage is that it has meant the children and I are much happier to go en masse to my mother’s at the weekend to enjoy free food and working Wifi. Although I’m not sure that this counts as a bonus for anyone except me, as it means I get to enjoy NOT providing the children with a meal which is the biggest excitement I get these days. I can honestly say the novelty of feeding my offspring has entirely worn off. 15 years ago, with my first precious baby girl, I was so worried about doing it ‘wrong’ I mistakenly thought buying organic jars of lovely mushed up food and feeding her only those, would be the best thing to do. To this day, I cannot fathom what I was thinking. Eventually I came to my senses and she then quickly progressed on to ‘real’ food and found that much like her mother, there was very little she wouldn’t eat. Including an infamous trial of my friend’s used cat litter. NICE. She would quite often have had her 5 a day in her breakfast and would eat vast numbers of cherry tomatoes in one sitting. Obviously, this changed as she grew up and her love of smoked salmon and avocado diminished until she was, predictably, eating ‘standard’ children’s food. But back in the early days of parenting, feeding your cute little babies is quite fun, it is such a big milestone and feels like you’re ‘properly’ doing the whole parenting thing. Fast forward 4 more pregnancies/children, 4 diagnosed Coeliacs, various long periods of time with little to no money and you arrive where I am now. With a very small weekly repertoire of meals the children will eat - only one or two that they will all agree to eat and a freezer full of oven chips. I’m not proud of it. I would love to be better at cooking and whip up vegetable curries packed full of chickpeas and spinach and present it with a flourish at 5 O clock to rapturous applause. But what I would actually be met with is tears from at least 2 of them. Possibly 3. It would inevitably lead to them not eating and then them all sneaking back in to the kitchen to forage for food later in the day whilst I am distracted - it is very much like living with a rat infestation - you go upstairs with nice food to eat in your kitchen and then come down some time later to discover discarded wrappers and crumbs in its place. 

The last word from BT was that my internet would be back on any day now, but others on the road have heard the end of the month, which would be a further 4 weeks. I can only imagine the pain. The big children have now started saying they will be moving in with Grandma until the wifi is back on. Although I'm hurt by the insinuation that they are only hanging around us for the internet access, I do like the idea of having only 2 smaller children to look after - I can't deny I would absolutely love some child free evenings. The older they get, the longer the hours you have to spend with them get, and I am quite often awoken up by one of the big ones as I snooze on the sofa between 9-10pm, in order for them to say goodnight to me. Grandma is no fool though and I very much doubt she'd enjoy her peace being shattered as well as the endless school runs, washing, after school clubs, feeding, fighting etc.

We will just have to hope that a collective frustration from our neighbours and us is enough to convince Openreach to pull their finger out and get us reunited once more. If not then I may solve all the problems and move to grandma's myself and leave them all here to fight it out amongst themselves.....