This time of pandemic was always going to be educational but this week, I’ve been surprised by what I learned. I have come to understand that I have a very unhealthy relationship with time – mine and other people’s. In the same way that the smoking ban revealed just what other nasty odours lurked beneath […]
Coronavirus: What are we going to talk about today?
“Mum, you’ve said that four times already today.” “I have?” “Yes. You telling people that the quality of the chat is going to get pretty skinny pretty quickly.” That was back at the start of the Time We Couldn’t Believe Was Happening when even our astonishment was worth commenting on. How quickly we’ve got used […]
Coronavirus: Beware the free-time fallacy
Stay at home, they said. Save lives, they said. It’ll only be for a while, they said. Look on the bright side, they said. Think of all that time to do the things you’ve been putting off for years. Shakespeare, they said, wrote some good material while social distancing from bubonic plague, and as for […]
Beating Stress in a Lockdown
We’re coming into the second, or third or, for some of us, even fourth week of lockdown due to coronavirus. It’s been a difficult time for many families and, even though acknowledging it can be difficult, it is sometimes half the battle, while other times we need to do something practical. This might be as […]
Coronavirus: We’re all in the same boat
Coronavirus: How does this make you feel?
Living in a time of contraditions Saturday morning and obviously, there’s no football, no yoga, no lovely long bike rides to cafes, no cinema, no supermarket shop, nothing doing out there except a brisk walk. Nope. And we know this. It sucks. We know this too. While I gaze out onto quiet, still and silent […]
The Best Ways to Celebrate Freedom
If you’ve ever been cooped up in your house for a long time, whether due to illness, bad weather or circumstances outside your control, you’ll know that before long your thoughts start to turn to all the plans you want to make for after you’re able to leave again. Your first trips outside again should […]
Coronavirus: It really is still only Wednesday…
Here’s what I learned today: Be careful what you wish for. Often in the olden days I wished that I could slow down time, that days would stop their break-neck hurtle. Yeah. That. Conversational quality is a spectrum. “Mum, that’s the fourth time you’ve said that and you saying how thin the chat is going […]