- Things are moving very fast - last week seems like a year ago.
- In Chris’s weeknotes (which were really good) he used the phrase “mundane terror”:
What the time does give, however, is the opportunity to show, for want of better words, mundane terror. The normally inconsequential bits of life that happen with a background of something ominous.
- “Mundane terror” has been a very helpful phrase for me at work this week as I try and support the team with the weird feeling that “we are living in exceptional times” but also “these AWS keys need rotating” and of course “hello? is this on? can you hear me? Keith, you’re muted”.
- I picked a good time to grow out my short hair - pray for all the women trying to maintain a crop right now.
- I knew that in theory L eats one pack per day of biscuits at work. But seeing it up close as we work from home. Wow, man.
- He alternates between Jammy Dodgers and Maryland Cookies.
- He panic bought a slide.
- E is still in nursery for a bit - I think we have to take each week as it comes.
- The man across the street who cleans his car every weekend while playing trap music very loudly, and called my neighbour a “old fucking bitch” when she complained about it is still out this morning, doing his thing, so that’s some normalcy to cling to.
- Fem Fri had this uplifting bit in it which helped me think about the prospect of Edith coming out of nursery in a different way:
This week my thoughts have particularly turned to parents, and to parents who are working from home while their kids are under their feet and bored. I am sorry if this is you and good luck with it all. It reminds me though of a time that I very vaguely remember – I must have been three or thereabouts. There was a time when, for no clear reason that I could see, my dad was in the house way more than usual. He’d take me for a walk every day, along the little river at the back of the estate we lived on. One day we collected watercress and took it home, and my mum made soup with it. On another day, we walked through a gate that we’d not been through before, and I said “is this further than we’ve ever walked”, and my dad looked at me and smiled and said “yes darling, this is further than we’ve ever walked.” Absolutely halcyon days. Perfect. Anyway, recently – maybe 18 months ago – my dad said to me, “you were very young, but do you remember when [employer] was making everyone take unpaid leave for two weeks at a time and me and you went on those walks along the burn?”. It made me realise that these times of, for me, absolute magic, must have for him been conducted at an incredible pitch of stress; one small child, another on the way, a mortgage, suddenly half the salary you were expecting for a month. Where I’m going with this, I guess, is that when you talk to your kids about this in the future you might say “do you remember that time of plague, when everything was awful and so stressful” and they will say “you mean those amazing times of unfettered ipad access and you were always there bringing the funtimes, they were beautiful, it could have lasted forever.”
- Thanks Alex
- I am listening to “Normal People” by Sally Rooney, it’s lovely.
- The current advice for pregnant women around COVID-19 is a bit confusing and I think I might need to write a blog post about it what the various medical bodies are saying. Sorry in advance for that.
- I won a prize at work. I shared an email I had written to my nursery in the work #parents Slack channel. It was my response to them saying they were intending to close but would still charge us the full fees (£65 per day). It took me a while to think of and there were other parents in that channel who would be in the same boat, so I decided to share it in case it was helpful. Someone at work saw it, along with a spreadsheet I had done collecting tech needs for WFH and a post to our line managers about looking after their reports’ mental health, and nominated me for an award. So now I have £120 to spend at John Lewis which will probably go on some nice loungewear for my new WFH liftstyle.
- My granny (96) phoned me and told me this was all very reminiscent of the outbreak of world war 2.