Covid 19 Diaries- School Run

22/September/2020

Today is the official day of my work? Or was it last Friday or the Tuesday before?  I will prepare a lesson for a year 10 student.  Husband takes a sudden enthusiasm in preparing children’s pack lunches. Did I tell you they switched to pack lunches? I supervise him. He insists on green apples again and sandwiches. An extra fruit salad on the side for both the kids. Not the fucking green apples again! My inner voice yells! I don’t have the strength to argue with him; a solid Liverpudlian to the core and Chinese! Massive chip on his shoulder. But this is his allure! My daughter has a slightest touch of cold. Runny nose but no more. Son decided to walk to school by himself so that we trail behind him while he meets up with his friend in the corner! We have to negotiate the bustling main street. Kids going off to rival school with heavily masked parents (less posh than my kids’school!), parents rushing off to work! I stop the traffic and let my son and his friend pass the narrow roads. More cars than the cows in verdant fields these days! My poetic voice intervenes? We arrive at the school gate, my daughter elbows me. Oh yes, I also carry some books with me for the book collection for school. My daughter is on David Walliams now; so gone are the days of sweet, melodic stories of Julia Donaldsons. I offer to walk her to her class and encounter the angry eyes of less than senior parents. Don’t you know I was once part of PTA? I want to smirk to irke them but collective niceness? My son calls PTA, parents Taco Association these days! Haha! We all need a laugh sometime or other.

Back home, husband on his seventh skype call already with one irate colleague or other. Some other crises in the master-card project for an air-flight company.

I go to my first pilates class and fall asleep for a few minutes back home afterwards. Nearly lunch time now. I sat out to do all the chores then prepare my lesson. An email comes through which I miss for the first a couple of hours. It is from the receptionist at school, my daughter was doing triple skips with her friends  just after lunch so that her face went bright red. On the line back, she found a lovely teacher and told her that she wasn’t feeling well. Receptionist then asks her to take off her tights to cool down.  It is 24 degrees in London today, why on earth was she wearing her new thick dress and tights! I argued with her in the morning to no avail. She had friends to impress! The head teacher comes to see her.  Of course she loves the attention! I write back to tell the receptionist that my husband will go and collect them; still hopeful that I might be able to make it to my first assignment.

“Aren’t you going to collect her wet pants yourself?” Husband jokes half heartedly. “No!” I snap.

Daughter returns home with her daddy and my son, she hasn’t eaten her lunch and hardly drunk any water today but triumphant for getting the headteacher’s undivided attention. Of course I had to cancel my assignment again. At least the son ate his lunch. Not the green apples. Husband reminisces about his childhood. How he had to wait at the window sill for his poor mum who would bring him chips after her shift at the local chippie. “And did she put some on your shoulder?” I snap. My son laughs and laughs.I then unduly suck my husband from his pack luch duties.

The next she spends time with mummy nursing her cold and painting mummy’s nails, drinking, eating and baking. Indulging in her pre-school hobbies!