Day 10

Friends, are you bored of seeing just your own four walls? Today I bring you a new game, courtesy of A and her sadly way too distant friend. Zoom hide and seek (also works with FaceTime, Skype, or any other video call on a portable device of some kind). Obscure your webcam, retreat to a random corner of your house, and get your friend to guess your location based on the three square inches of ceiling or wall visible past your very close up face. Much giggling! This works best when you are as familiar with your friend's house as you are your own. And provides tantalising half images of siblings and parents who are also currently so very very far apart.

Two Zooms today; the second, a family chat to wish Granddad a happy birthday. Much planned, much anticipated, and all wider family members involved managed more or less to sort the technology out in advance. Go us! A now has plans for her own birthday, having seen that up to forty people can join in any one zoom conference at a time. Hmm. We may need extra friends.

In other, equally exciting news, we finally managed to complete the new climbing frame and slide. I say we, I mean I. I did this! I built an entire climbing frame (ok, one which arrived in kit form). Two people, two hours it said. One rather harassed Mummy, two electronic screwdrivers, a bit of unofficial lump hammering, and the better part of a week. Oh, and unfortunately some duct tape doing a slide repair before we'd even begun. But. I built it! And my son climbs it triumphantly, does a victory spin on the deck, and then slides his way down, over and over again, before racing off to do circuits of the rest of the garden and a quick bounce on the trampoline. He has even learned how to side shuffle from the climbing wall over onto the deck to come down the slide. I tell myself this skill is positive physiotherapy, and will definitely counteract the damage done by bouncing for ages in a W-sit. I'm not convinced. But, for now, it is survival. He is busy. Running, climbing, crawling, spinning, bouncing, spinning, generally wearing himself outside and no longer haunting the front door begging to be let out.

New improved advice from NHS England arrived today, with "The Letter", containing more impractical advice on how to keep A alive during this time. And some helpful tips I might not otherwise have thought of, such as keep eating and drinking well, and think about how you will get your food and medicines whilst you cannot leave the house. Thanks, guys. But, usefully, the original advice "You must stay inside. You must not leave your house. You may sit by an open window" has been expanded to include "You may go out in your garden" so we made her. And she enjoyed it.

Grolly is not enjoying the peaceful empty streets. Her crowd of worshippers have vanished, and she is not impressed with having to make do with us. Always, she is there waiting to greet our carers in the carpark - and yet now the carpark remains empty. She is there to wrap her body around the children racing to school in the mornings, and those coming home in the afternoons. And they are also absent. Those few who do come past our door cannot stop to fuss her. Strange times. She has decided it is best to watch the children's antics in the back garden from the safety of inside, not being a fan of the small one's enthusiastic grabs.