Day 94 – June 25 2020 – Living with ‘Situation Covid 19’
It’s a good while since I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) during ‘curfew’ or ‘lockdown’ or whatever this strange situation is called.
Actually it isn’t, and has never been, a lockdown, nor strictly a curfew, but what else would you call the last three months or so when many people have been advised to self-isolate and all of us have been asked to only mix with the other members of our own household?
The government have recently given out dates for pubs and cinemas to open (whilst still adhering to social distancing rules etc) and told us people can meet outdoors in groups of 6, which has been wonderful for me as I so enjoy running with my friends.
I am not going to go into ‘rules and regulations of what to to whilst ‘Covid 19’ is rife’ as I know I would get something wrong*.
I have to admit I am not particularly following the news anymore because – in my opinion – the media focus on the negatives and I much prefer to look at positives.
I am actually quite pragmatic and if 2020 is a year to ‘delay’ socialising and holidays then so be it.
My weeks are still pretty full and I look after 2 of my grandchildren one day a week now; we have the greatest of times. Today Myles and Isla made cakes this morning (the only help from me was a bit of instruction). Myles made fairy cakes and Isla made ‘Coco-pop and crunchy-nut cornflake fairy cakes’ – her description, not mine.
We then had fun-time (as Myles called it) where he read a story to Isla and then I tested him on spellings. He is nine-and-a-half and very bright so asked to be tested on 11 year old spellings: I actually chose words from the ‘12 year old spelling bee’ page and, realising the words listed as ‘easy’ were too easy for him, moved on to ‘medium’ and ‘hard’. Some words he hadn’t even heard of (for example ‘exasperating’) yet he still managed to spell them.
I love spelling, and he does too, but even I was impressed with him today.
The three of us then packed up a picnic of sandwiches, cakes, strawberries, crisps, pretzels and Ribena and went to collect Katie from school before driving to Bentley Pauncefoot (a beautiful place just on the outskirts of Redditch).
The children paddled barefoot in the Water Splash in Pumphouse Lane for about an hour before we dawdled back up the lane to a little triangle of grass, where my fathers memorial bench is.
Whilst eating our picnic Katie and Myles asked lots of questions about Great-Grandad Jack and kissed his bench which brought a tear to my eye. He would have adored them, and them he.
All in all it has been a wonderful day: at 7.30am I went for a run with some of my favourite running buddies, I then dropped into Mums to drop some shopping off and then dropped a newspaper and some fresh eggs to a vulnerable person in our village before picking up the grand-children for the day.
Writing this made me think; although Myles isn’t at school he did maths when cooking, calculating how much of each ingredient he needed where he also multiplied and divided the weights; English cam in the form of spelling and reading and then geography when we looked at different colours of stones and discussed how stones change in water. The geography lesson finished when I googled where Bentley Water splash actually went to (the answer is the sea via the River Avon via several brooks).
People keep talking about the ‘new normal’. I have never known what normal is (surely normal is a different thing to different people) but if today is anything to go by I embrace it.
Hugs
Grand-Tree (this is my new tribal name according to the terrific three)