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Well, today I am feeling under the weather, presumably having picked up whatever bug the 5yo has. I don’t think it’s probably COVID19 as she has no cough – although she did spike an impressive temperature last night and started hallucinating – and I have mild cold symptoms and no fever. It feels slightly unfair to get a virus that is THE virus right now, but on the other hand there isn’t a better time to be unwell because everything is cancelled anyway.

My 11yo is really, really sad that school is now closed for her. No-one knows when schools will go back, but she is in Year 6, so it is entirely possible that her primary school days are now over. All the things she has been looking forward to to mark the end of this chapter in her life – the end of school disco, the Leavers’ Assembly, the three day camping trip, the Year 6 Show, even just taking in a t-shirt for all her friends and teachers to sign on the last day – all look pretty unlikely to happen. I feel so desperately sad for her, and so impotent.

I also feel sad for my 5yo. She hasn’t really taken the implications in yet, but she has been having such a happy time in Reception – adoring her teachers, making lots of friends, soaking up the learning like a little sponge – and that is also potentially over, and she won’t see those friends for a very long time.

I am so, so grateful to the children’s school and their amazing teachers for a) giving them such a brilliant school year so far that they are upset not to be going in on Monday, and b) for everything they are doing now to create novel and imaginative ways of distance learning. Teachers, you absolutely rock.

The 11yo is starting a journal today so she has a record of her own life and feelings through this momentous period of world history, and I want to think of a creative way the 5yo create her own little bit of posterity too.

Today I am grateful that as lots of families are panicking about how they try and work full-time jobs to earn an income as well as working another full-time job home-schooling their children, that at least my work is very flexible and I don’t have a boss breathing down my neck to check how many hours I have done!