Blog 9: Impotence and The Periodic Table
The ‘against all odds’ daughter is on ‘ie’ spellings. The instruction is to put, ‘Fields, chief, piece and brief’ into sentences. She starts with, ‘The fields are green and lush’ which is an oddity because last time I looked there were dandelions growing on the grass and the brown patches were matching the green ones in a kind of salute to patchworks. Next it is, ‘A piece of cake’ which figures as every time I turn around, she is stuffing it down. This is followed by, ‘Brief and quotient’. I would say this is a self-reflection of the amount of work she is doing as it is increasingly short and the result of division into smaller pieces as the days go by, although I had no idea that she knew the word quotient and put that down to a clever mistake or a google cut and paste exercise. The finale though is something not to forget – she ponders over what to do with ‘chief’. The result is, ‘The chief is impotent’ – I look at her and she looks at me. She feels delighted that she has catapulted the big man into the realms of those that are important, whilst I feel that perhaps he needs to go out and buy some Viagra, if of course the other chiefs haven’t bought it all up to get through the lockdown.
Next up is an emoji multiplication crossword. I am increasingly thinking that maths these days is not really about rows of sums but is a sort of fancy-dress parade. At the beginning of the week it was multiplying and dividing by sticking sums onto a Christmas tree and today it is times tables by happy and sad faces. I feel that someone needs to get straight with the children and break the news that maths isn’t art and craft in disguise but rows of boring sums with no festive bauble or smiley face pretending otherwise. The hideous process of trying to get out of her what 11 x 10 is, is further exasperated by the fact that she keeps leaning her elbow onto the laptop re-starting the YouTube craft tutorial on how to make a bookmark of a panda. We are now repeating what the multiplication is and getting no responses because she is too busy looking dewy eyed at the possibility of cutting and colouring an animal to stick into her book that she refuses to read. Still we press on and after a lot of hideous tables repetition, plus muting of the distracting YouTube, we can reveal something of a Pac-Man type emoji with a tear drop on one side. I am glad that it feels the same as I do about the whole experience.
The ‘teenager’ announces he is writing to Waitrose about palm oil. This is geography and youthful demonstration about sustainability. I tell him that he doesn’t need to worry about speaking to up-market supermarkets because he is doing a very good job already about abstaining. Afterall he hasn’t washed his hair for about a week and he has worn the same hoodie for close to a fortnight which he refuses to take off – so therefore he is doing his bit about protesting about the palm oil in shampoo and laundry detergent – job done.
It’s Friday Zoom day with the classes and again they have sensibly organised a double whammy for both year groups with just half an hour apart. I am darting from room to room putting in passwords for modern dance online for the year six and virtual coffee mornings for year three. The ‘against all odds’ girl is not impressed that she may have to spend an hour with some middle-aged mums drinking decaf coffee and waxing lyrical about teenage washing habits whilst the ‘middle child’ refuses to put on a unitard and do a paradiddle tap dance. We eventually sort them, and everyone is zoomed in on time and fake smiling. The ‘middle child’ is doing a class quiz - one of the brainy kids asks what the chemical symbol of Tungsten is – the chat goes awfully quiet because for most of them they have been dumbed down for eight weeks and can only just about still write their name – they press on and everything is realigned when the next question is, “Who has raised over ￡32 million for the NHS?” and everyone can answer that one.
The ‘against all odds’ daughter appears to be at some sort of a bohemian online party where the children just lie around on their floor and say how bored they are to the class teacher. It doesn’t go unnoticed that she is still in her pyjamas and it is now 2pm – the hair cut from earlier in the week is starting to show up some defects so now she looks like one of the orphans out of Annie which she dramatises when she says that she hasn’t been out on a pony like everyone else or been reading anything other then the instructions of a sub-standard craft bookmark.
Still it’s the weekend and we are planning how far we can go for our multiple allowances of exercise. We are prepared to spend longer in the car then the actual exercise because no-one said it had to be 'matchy matchy' and quite frankly at this point having them all strapped in and sitting still for any amount of time, preferably with headphones in, would be the most enjoyable way to spend both Saturday and Sunday. As we declare the weekend is officially here, I google to find out that ‘W’ denotes Tungsten and I wonder how I have achieved the four decades of my life without this knowledge but there again I have no idea what a fronted adverbial is either and that has served me just as well. Toodle pip, am off to see if the big chiefs are in town and study which motorways of England take the most amount of time to drive from one end to the other.
By Annie Hayes - If you like my blog please do like and share it. Thanks muchly x