Day 1 - A Period of Adjustment

After the announcement, it seemed fitting for me and my hubby, John, to down a bottle of Merlot each.  I can't remember why now.  It just seemed appropriate at the time. So as a consequence of our actions, Day 1 of Lockdown got off to a rather slow start in our house.

     I began by making the fateful mistake of looking in the mirror after dragging my sorry arse out of
bed and was totally mortified to say the least.  Day 1 ffs!  Day 1 and I could have sworn that my roots had already grown by about 2 inches and my pasty, puffed-up face looked like a cross between a scrunched up old tissue and a bowl of porridge. This is why vlogging is NOT an option for me. If  this was my starting point, where the hell was it all going to end?

Of course, Day 1 of Lockdown = Day 1 of home-schooling 😱 So this is how it went here:

Day 1- timetable for Molly and Marcus (my 10 year old twins)

Maths - Dividing a catering sized pack of Haribo into two (this took 45 minutes, raised voices and the need for me to dispose of the 'spare' cola bottle)

PE - Wrestling over the X Box controllers, trampolining on an already struggling sofa and approximately 15 matches on Fifa

English - Reading whatever the hell words come up on the screen while  kids play X Box

Music - Repeatedly singing the line 'I lak ta move it move it' over and fucking over (until I joined in with a chorus of my own!)

Day 1- timetable for Cleo (my 16 year old)

Drama - The only thing on the curriculum for Cleo today (but to be fair to her, she threw herself into this wholeheartedly, performing a wide selection of theatrical monologues about how unfair all of this was, how there's no way that it's possible to go a WHOLE 3 weeks without seeing her friends or boyfriend, how he's going to meet someone else before she's set free from this shitty hell-hole)

Not gonna lie, as yet I have no idea how I will persuade a teenager whose GCSEs have been cancelled that she actually does still need to do some schoolwork, as it's highly probable that one day she will need to read, write and add up again.

Throughout all of this, John was about as much use as athlete's foot.  He scrolled through his phone, only looking up to terrorise us all with some appalling new fact about COVID 19  and make sandwiches with our already dwindling supply of bread. I suppressed the urge to lamp him with one of the empty Merlot bottles, reminding myself that it was only Day 1.  I don't want to peak too soon now, do I?

I did not attempt the 'working from home' thing.  I figured that in the present climate, there'd be no emergencies arising in the field of luxury skincare and therefore a day off wouldn't hurt.   To be perfectly honest, keeping up with all of the chat in my various WhatsApp groups these days is a full time job in itself. Given all of the evidence that I previously mentioned, I can only presume that this was also the case for John.

Day 2 will be a fresh new day and I will strive to get some sort of structure into this house.  We will:

• Do the Joe Wicks workout. 
•  Set up a classroom in the dining room.
•  Negotiate a workable timetable with all kids, covering as many areas of the curriculum as is possible, taking into account the limited skillset of their parents (especially John!)
•  End the day with a lovely home-cooked family meal.
•  All get to bed by 10.30, rather than working our way through a box set and any more of our precious stock of wine.

What could possibly go wrong???