Day 19.

Saturday today. Traditionally the one day of the week where we have no carers, no alarm clocks, nothing fixed in the morning ever, so we can all take our time to start the day. Pancake day too, a recurring weekly feast to mark the difference from school and church days. A generally takes advantage of this to sleep in until 9 or 10 am. But lack of school (more, I suspect, the lack of commute) means she is less worn out by Friday night, and so by 7.30 everyone was awake with pancakes on plates, and the prospect of an empty day ahead.

We should have been loading the bus and trundling down the M4 until it ran out, then trundling along the smaller roads until we ran out of land and were at our lovely seaside home. Next year?

And so, instead, a quieter but similarly shaped day to all the other days so far. A silent phone as all professionals have retreated for their own weekends being the only difference. That, and the chance for A to shout through an open window to her friend our neighbour.

Time spent outside. Time spent inside. Cleaning and hoovering and hoping to polish all the germs away. A refining her script, D excelling himself by combining stones and cat food in a particularly gross kind of Chubby Bunnies contest.

Beautiful warm sun; I pace and star jump around the garden until D is annoyed with me, grabs my hands and pushes me onto a bench to sit still for a bit. Tulips popping up everywhere. Giant daffodils, snapping under their own weight, and miniature daffodils, half hidden by larger greenery. Blue flowers, yellow primroses (unless they are cowslips?), hints of leaves forming on the apple and fig trees, and birdsong. The distant hum of lawnmowers, and one motorbike, shockingly loud in the absence of regular traffic.

A book recommendation by a friend, and a brief escape into a different world. Nice whilst it lasted.

The news stays incomprehensible; I have switched it off. Taking a Sabbath from reality, holing up in the garden and concentrating even more than ever on the fact that we are ok today.

And in the evening, a boy who is tired, but who cannot settle. Who needs to stay connected even as he drifts off to sleep.

Trust. Thankfulness.