Day 24. Thursday

D decided to throw a party for one last night. He extended the invitation to the rest of us, but we chose to decline, and to lie fuming at the noise instead. Irritating.

But another beautiful glorious sunshiny day. Silent. No agenda, no visitors, alerts and reminders on my phone calendar serving only to highlight the world we have stepped away from for now. I say no visitors; a doorstep chat with my parents, trading home made hot cross buns for precious eggs whilst keeping our safe distance, body blocking D who cannot understand why the door is suddenly open and yet he cannot walk through it.

Three grumpy members of the family this morning; this grumpy mother abandoned her two grumpy children to go and sit in the garden. Two grumpy children chose to ignore the sunshine and stare at screens until the batteries went flat.

A roast chicken induced truce, and a better evening, thankfully. I am hugely grateful for our outside space.

Feels like nothing much got done, and yet we roasted a chicken. A ticked off more of her ASDAN award by clearing a table, hoovering and mopping a couple of floors. D managed to enjoy his bath, get dressed down to his boots, and then step back into the water. Fitting, to have extra clean feet on Maundy Thursday. I tweaked our poor fig again, and tried for the second time to wire one of the branches to a conveniently placed snail. This is not usually a success.

12 weeks, they say we need to keep this up. But no one knows when to count these twelve weeks from. The date of the letter? The date we pulled A from school? The date the last of the vulnerable receive their letter (three weeks later, many people are only just getting the news)? Or, more likely, is twelve weeks just a number pulled from the air in the same way the initial three week lighter lockdown was for everyone else? Keeping score is not helpful, I suspect, and yet, what else is there to do? I am not counting down to freedom, but instead marking off the days we have survived. Not survived without corona, but survived this strange new life. 24 days since I last touched another adult human being. 24 days since I walked over the fields to drop D at preschool. 24 days since I last drove the car, spent time without children, had the freedom to wander at will. It is a very pleasant prison here, and we are surprising ourselves in our combined family ability to make it into a more pleasant environment day by day. But still, the lack of freedom chafes. 24 days since I was able to have an uninterrupted phone call or conversation with another human being. 24 days since I could sit down without being asked for something. 60 days at the very least before we can think about doing any of these things again. But some will be gone for a year or more I think, and some will have gone forever. I can't think that far ahead. But still, we tick off the days. 24.