The Paroking Diaries: Blog 11: It’s Half-term ‘Init’ And We Are All Wacko

It's half term but not as we know it because the getaway is from the online learning portal to the holiday home that is in the kitchen.

The ‘against all odds’ girl decides that she will wear her pyjamas for the duration, which is fine by me because it gives me more time in the day if I don’t have to negotiate with her to get changed and as we rarely see anyone bar the neighbours then who’s judging. She is making a den in the second holiday home that is the dining room with plentiful blankets strewn up everywhere and weighed down with books that are not read. The ‘middle child’ is in on the act and manipulates his position as the senior by getting her to run the gauntlet to the snack cupboard. I hear him say, ‘Wacko’ because the husband has insisted on lowering food costs by shopping at low priced supermarkets that carry no brands and apparently don’t pay marketing people either because a Twix now has a doppelganger that has a biscuit base with caramel ontop with a new name that signals someone is going to get either very high off this or have the key characteristics required to join the Cabinet. ‘Wacko, Wacko, Wacko’ he keeps saying and she dutifully goes on the covert mission to collect them. I can’t be bothered to get cross that they are stuffing down the ill-named snacks because at least I don’t have to deliver a lesson on Greek myths or work out the square root of something.

Sadly, the teenager’s school has decided it’s the right thing to do to follow through with end of year exams and this falls the week after half -term, so now I am swapping the ones that love the Wacko to the one that now has to cram in a year’s worth of work into a week. It’s a total joy of course because he insists, I help him, a lot, with this. We start with buying a tee-shirt in French, “Puis-je acheter un tee-shirt? The problem is we have had too many of the Wackos and can’t stop laughing at the exaggerated pronunciation of ‘acheter’ and I also note that we won’t be ‘achet’ anything in our favourite low-cost clothing store that is Primark because they have made the sensible decision not to have an online business – great strategy for Coronatime, I think they may employ the same people as the Wacko lot. We move onto English and Sherlock Holmes – The Sign of The Four. I ask the teenager if he has read it all. He looks at me and elongates the ‘Yessss’ long enough for me to know the answer is ‘non’ and English is getting ‘null points’. I do a quick YouTube search and see that the ‘teenager’ can circumnavigate the reading part with a quick summary which takes 7.33 minutes delivered by a student that may also not have read the book but who am I to argue? If the book is summarised, even badly, it is job done and we are outta of here.

I suggest the beach. I announce it as a great treat, and they all reply that they want to stay at home. ‘But’ I say, ‘We have been at home for 10 weeks, surely you want to go out?’ ‘No’ they chorus back in unison whilst swallowing down the last of the Wackos. I live in fear that we may be morphing into the Walton's with a slight leaning towards obesity brought on by the cheap snacks, so I announce there is no choice, and everyone will go happily and delight in the sand under their toes and their sandwiches. We make the 40-minute trip and pitch up – it is windy. Like really, really windy so the sand really is now in everything and not just the sandals. A family come and pitch up beside us and start constructing a wind break which now touches the back of our chairs. When we go and play ball the windbreak family decide they can take up position in our sandcastle and pick up all our buckets and spades. Mum is now taking a photo of this. She sees me coming and apologises handing back the bucket and spade but we’re not in Waitrose and they are not wiping it down. I figure she had been hanging out with Dominic Cummings too much because the apology is delivered with a snarl.

We go home to re-sanitise. I check my emails. The ‘middle child’ is returning to school after half-term. There is a letter about groups of children and coloured bands. The baseline is that they are expected to move around in a cult within their rainbow appointed groups – not speaking or spitting at each other. It’s like being at a holiday club except you don’t get to gorge at the buffet bar or take up your entitlement to a sun lounger. The ‘middle child’ is delighted to be seeing his friends but then I drop the bomb shell that there are no school lunches and he has to take in a packed lunch. ‘What, do I really have to eat ham sandwiches for the rest of my life?’ ‘No I say, I can do cheese also.’ ‘Oh mum,’ he groans, 'Well' I say, ‘I could achet some Wackos’. He smiles in acceptance and I think that being high on the caramel biscuit may help the marching in the coloured groupings feel a little lighter. 

By Annie Hayes. If you like my blog then please do 'like' it and 'share it'. Thanks Muchly x