The Year We (Mostly) Stayed at Home

 

 

 The past four Springs have signalled a sense of renewal. A symbol of birth and beginnings; a dawn of new adventures. A teetering on the edge of hope. This year, the appearance of daffodils and snowdrops and slightly warmer days brought with it a sense of landing. Of arrival. A feeling of settling in. And partly due to the global events of the year gone by, the adventurous energy has dimmed and in its place there’s an acceptance of where we find ourselves, of being tethered to a more secure and permanent base from which to explore.

The Covid lockdown hit a few weeks after we moved in last March. It has essentially continued in one way or another and is only now beginning to ease. I’m not going to dwell on that as it has affected all of us deeply in various ways; we’ve all got our own stories and perspectives according to our experiences. Thankfully, we’ve managed financially and we’ve stayed well. But in a year where ‘masks’ became an everyday accessory and the physical gesture of the ‘virtual hug’ between friends and loved ones became a new version of the ‘dab’, the one positive it did bring was a chance to pause.

Moving in

Instead of racing away to the four corners of the country and over the seas we were restricted to exploring the local surroundings of our new home and a once-a-week food shop. We’ve spent hours in the sunny garden bird watching, bird listening, nest spotting, playing rounders, playing piggy in the middle, skipping, practising cartwheels and handstands, adding up scores in games of quoits. Our options for walks were those that could be taken from the front door, and how grateful we are to the nearby river, stream and woods, churchyard and Arboretum and endless lanes and public footways. The farm next door has provided elderflower cheese, Devon Chutney, and fig and honey crackers for many a lazy summer afternoon. And of course, all of this ‘inaction’ has had a positive impact on our environment that will hopefully form some semblance of a ‘new normal’.

We made lemonade. Elderflower syrup. Garlic pesto with wild leaves collected from the

woods. Spent hours skimming stones at the ‘pebbly beach’, where the water changed its meander daily, so sometimes where there was an island one day, on another day there were two, and streams to jump over to reach them, or waist length pools to dip into. We noticed the blue iridescence of dragonflies that otherwise may have been missed.

The normally busy road that splits the village in two became eerily empty with only the odd car or bus passing through. Children could have played on it. Actual children playing actual games on an actual street. Imagine! Jumpers for goalposts and all that.

Unfortunately, supermarket queues were a few hundred metres long. The weeks leading up to full lockdown I patiently waited for the shelves to fill back up with hand sanitiser, and toilet paper, but they never did. I found some in small independent shops and random places like the pop-up post office, twice the price. Then it was flour, and pasta that disappeared. I suppose that’s what ‘the end of the world’ does to people. All we need is toilet paper after all, to survive, and tonnes of homemade bread!

The closure of schools heralded the beginning of a mental health recovery for one child, but for the other it stole friends, football, and the much-anticipated End of Year 6 Greek Olympics that was to be both a celebration and a rite of passage. Instead, finding ourselves thrown into a world of sudden and unanticipated ‘school at home’ we discovered Khan Academy (“My brain wants to do more of these.”) which was quite fun, and other free online resources, and spiced up English assignments by reading Of Mice and Men in awfully bad but funny southern accents. It gave us an insight into the options available if we did want to home educate, and a practise at how we might manage it, and that at least cleared away some fear of the unknown. We made a Greek vase out of paper mache; a model of the solar system out of felted wool and an old hanger; rewrote an Aesops Fable; came to understand metric conversions and weight and mass in the kitchen rather than a classroom. Like everyone, we baked lots, and contributed (about three times) to that Joe Wicks guy becoming famous! We made up our own games and played cards and board games, wrote scripts and acted them out. And Noah spent almost the entire lockdown in a Chewbacca Onesie, like many others around the world who discovered their own style of ‘Lockdown Pyjama’.

The mug says it all!

For me, lockdown and school closure began just prior to the easter holidays and at first it felt like a glorious break from a busy routine, giving us time to spend together doing not very much at all. It was quite liberating. Like everyone else we made plans to do more yoga, learn a new language, write a novel. Maciek was home for a part of it, and it felt like a holiday. The weather was fab. I was still working at the school, albeit remotely. However, the school closure coincided with an academy takeover: new management, new procedures, new expectations. Countless Teams meetings. Stress levels soared. Screen fatigue took over. Coping with the sudden demands of a now home-based part-time job which suddenly felt full-time along with two kids home schooling began to take its toll. Throw into that mix: a new puppy why don’t you?

Yes, the new ankle-biting yap-yap-yappy ball of fluff. Persephone. Abbreviated to Sephi. Another name I have to repeat three times and spell out over the phone! (You’d think I’d know the NATO phonetic alphabet like the back of my hand by now!). The name was chosen a year before, following an interest in Greek Mythology. Queen of the Underworld and Goddess of Spring. Extremely fitting, I must say, for she is both at once lovely and evil. A lockdown inside a lockdown, it was. Living in the kitchen, sleeping on the couch, surrounded by the constant stench of dog pee mixed with grapefruit-scented floor cleaner.

How glad was I in particular then to see the arrival of the summer holidays. The weeks leading up to them I felt I could hardly breathe. That final week was like sinking under a giant wave that thankfully pushed me, exhausted and depleted, onto the shore, rather than drowning me as I had come to believe was inevitable. Thank God for you, Summer. Happy days.

Restrictions had eased slightly by then which came by way of a more confusing and convoluted version of the original ‘stay home but go out’ message from Boris. So we stole away to the Wye Valley. Braved a camping trip with The Evil Fluff. I’d been wanting to visit Puzzle Wood since 2014 but on turning up full of excitement we discovered dogs weren’t allowed. Boo! Also, pre-booking was required, as it was with everything, which is something we hadn’t yet copped on to. It was still nice to get away somewhere different. We re-visited Tintern, and the cottage where we stayed several years ago, had some lovely meals outside in the sun, and Noah and Maciek added to their ‘wild swim’ tally on the last day.

Late August, in lieu of a planned Italian summer holiday at Lake Garda, we decided to visit the Lake District. Absolutely stunning landscape, if only we weren’t drowning in rain and being sucked under mud! People had offered polite wavering smiles and strange facial expressions when we declared we’d be camping in the Lake District. We soon found out why. Very very glad of the wellies and waterproofs. There was one sunny day where Maciek and Noah clocked up another swim.

That was the week of Amelia’s birthday, and we had planned a surprise daytrip to Alnwick Castle where some of Harry Potter was filmed. After several days and nights we couldn’t take much more of being trapped, wet and freezing, inside our tent with a muddy smelly dog, and we really didn’t want that to be Amelia’s birthday experience, so the evening-but-one before her birthday, we crouched by torchlight and in between internet connections and failures, found a hotel room near the castle, one that would take dogs (it was a small ground floor ‘house’ on the grounds). The big lure was the promise of an indoor heated swimming pool. Given the time of year and Covid prices, it cost us £200! Ordinarily we would NEVER spend that amount, but times were desperate, as we sat huddled and dripping just outside the tent, discussing, umming and arring, away from earshot of the kids.

So, we got to packing overnight bags and Amelia’s presents, ready for the drive the next day, gladly leaving the tent standing its sodden ground against the wind. We thought we’d never get away with it. Surely they’d suspect something was afoot. Surely they’d ask why we were packing all our toiletries for a daytrip. But no. They only began their suspicions by late afternoon and our decoy was that we were going to a nice restaurant for a birthday dinner. Even once we arrived at the hotel, they had no clue. Maciek and I went to check in, only to be told that due to Covid restrictions, children were not allowed in the pool. Another Boo! So disappointing, since it was the thing we knew they’d be most excited about, having not been swimming at all for months. After swallowing that bit of unwelcome news, we had to wait in the car a further 45 minutes as our ‘table’ wasn’t ready. When we finally got the keys, we found a cosy but extraordinarily and jawdroppingly overpriced ground floor flat. Nevertheless, it was warm and dry with a hot shower and fully functioning kettle along with a selection of teas and even hot chocolate! The kids were impressed. Sephi bombed about in delight. And Amelia woke up happy and warm to her 14^th birthday. The most expensive one of her life, but worth it.

The next surprise was Alnwick Castle which wasn’t actually open (except for the grounds and one or two rooms by pre-book which we hadn’t known about). Also, dogs weren’t allowed. RAAAA! So, only three of us went in. It was still good, and the main thing is it made our girl very happy (also it was the first time she tasted coffee!). And from the ramparts, far off in the distance beside a river, we spotted a ‘man with a white fluffy thing’ which we identified as Daddy. So, in a way, he was with us!

On the drive back we had lemon cupcakes on a section of Hadrian’s Wall between showers. The plan to have dinner a Polish restaurant didn’t eventuate so then it was Chapter Two: The Dreaded Return to the Soaking Tent. Oh well, it wasn’t a holiday, it was an ‘experience’, so to speak, and one we would have missed out on if it wasn’t for Covid and we’d been stuck with Lake Garda as planned (By the way, Grasmere is lovely – Amelia wants to live there!). And just for Noah, driving back to Devon took us via Liverpool. Of course, tours were closed, but a wander around Anfield has to be one of the highlights for Noah!

Over the summer were many more daytrips – beach and moor – and Maciek experienced wild camping and survival skills on Dartmoor with some friends, crossing a freezing river in his undies and sleeping in a hammock. If you know Maciek, you’ll know that the river/undies bit is an extraordinary achievement, along with all his other wild swims! His tally for 2020 was 13!

Living beside a farm gave us the amazing opportunity to witness calves being born in the field beside our driveway, in August. Six in one viewing, once. That’s that bit of education covered.

Another semi-lockdown came in November, and another full one in January/February/March, brings us to now; a gradual removal of restrictions. Things are slowly opening back up. For how long we don’t know. Through all of it, the lack of socialising and feelings of isolation have had a profound effect on many. Being alone became a new norm. It felt weird talking to people again, meeting up with friends, after such a long time feeling like there are no friends. Feeling like this little village is the world, which perhaps is the way it needs to be, if we’re to make a positive impact on the health of the Earth.

We’ve been given a good length of time to stop and smell the roses (or in my case, apple blossoms – so pretty! And good for bees!). And having this extraordinary time to spend with the kids, to be together without the bombardment of external expectations has been an introvert’s dream! Although, we are a little bit excited to be going to a cinema again. Just one of the quiet local ones, mind.