The Paroking Diaries: Blog 12: It’s Back to School and It’s a Game of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire

The alarm has gone off, which is a strange siren for my brain to deal with after eleven weeks of being in groundhog day where time is not a commodity of any value. The ‘middle child’ is actually going to school and must be there at 8.35am. This comes as something of a shock to him and to me and is a cruel role reversal because the husband who should be on a train and up at 6.30am is now basking in the glory of being firmly attached to the bed sheets and, I am the one that is up before him. He is loving this.

Yet, it isn’t school as we know it. It’s a version with many oddities attached. There is no school uniform and he is told to wear his PE kit infinitum. There’s also no bag with keyrings attached of The Golden Gate Bridge or names emblazoned in Caps lock because Smiggle stationery has been outlawed and clear freezer bags are in. School lunches are also a ‘no-no’ and we are on a daily sandwich rotation of ham, cheese and ham again. The water fountains have been capped off too because physical contact and mutual touching of surfaces is a punishable crime. In this version of school, shouting across social distanced desks is the new normal, colours are in vogue too – the ‘middle child’ is allocated to the ‘yellow’ group, which appears to be a gathering of mainly boys that prefer cricket to school work.

We pitch up and there is a line of children eyeballing each other at two metre markers – close enough to wave, too far to spit. The teacher stands at the classroom doorway giving virtual hugs and dispensing hand sanitiser into sticky palms that haven’t touched pencils in weeks. It’s like we are queuing for Santa’s grotto, but we get a guy in a Hazmat suit. Ten minutes into the school day and a child coughs. The dominos are starting to fall. The cougher is sent home because it’s lockdown and we need to ‘stay alert’ (apparently). The school calls us to tell us. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘Are the neon yellows being shut down?’ because the school told us that if someone has it then we all need to stay home for 14 days. I try to infer some care into my responses because I don’t want to appear a heathen and the mother that wants to shove their child out the door Dukes of Hazard style whilst cranking up the music and doing a handbrake turn out of the school gates. ‘No’, the school say, ‘They are being tested.’ The relief is palpable. I consider ‘what’s apping’ the neon yellow parents and telling them we should make a pact to tell the darlings to only cough in the loo or behind a hedge because we need school to be open for our own mental wellbeing and because we are now in a version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where if you cough in this ‘back to school’ version you are out and you don’t get to buy a luxury yacht with the proceeds.

Pick up is a game of connect four, white spots have been painted on the grass at social distanced spaces and we must stand on them to collect our darlings whilst hoping that someone doesn’t block our exit. We can see our parent friends and gesticulate about the tiresome homeschooling but we need to turn our hearing aids up because everyone hasn’t seen each other for months and the chatter is off the scale, now there is the distance thing too and the white pimples on the grass to deal with so we are all shouting and white spots are invading our pupils. It’s like being at a free rave. The ‘middle child’ appears, less one of his friends who is in jail with Charles Ingram. He announces he has had a great day moving around with the ‘yellow’ gang. They got to play in the cricket nets, but they can’t throw a ball to each other and catch it because that is touching and therefore sharing equipment which is a big no in Coronavirus land. This makes sport very tricky although it might not be a bad thing because the skin on their palms is so sore from the frequent school handwashing and hand gel that they can only just about pick up one of the sanitised HB pencils without getting a searing pain.

Whilst the ‘middle child’ has been playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and marching with the yellow gang, the ‘teenager’ has begun year eight exams. This is a game of trust. We trust him that it is not an open book exercise and remind him that he is only ‘cheating’ himself, although in my head I am thinking that I would like to see a sweep of 80%. It’s non-calculator maths, he is using equations to work out the area of part of a trapezium. I ‘pop in’ to see how he is doing. He points to the question and I have no idea, I sadly can’t even do it if I Google it. He flicks his hands in disgust that I don’t know anything about polygons or maths calculations to assess their area. I feel I wouldn’t be much use to Charles Ingram either.

Next up is DT – this is paper-based because design and technology are nothing to do with making anything these days. He has a six-marker resting on the differences between brazing and welding. Once again, I have no idea what either is and wonder if there is an option to phone a friend or ask the audience. Although the audience at home is useless so maybe a 50/50 would be better. At least I can help with geography, the question asks to name three characteristics of a slum. This I can do because as well as the Charles Ingram episode I have watched Slumdog Millionaire and the homestead with the chickens and the three children has lapsed into low standards of hygiene so I tip him the wink – ‘like here’ I say. He nods in agreement and dutifully writes down, ‘Low levels of sanitation’. Toodle pip I need to pick up the ‘middle child’ from his yellow pod and boil wash his clothes to comply with new school standards.

By Annie Hayes. If you like my blog, please ‘like’ it and ‘share’ it. Thanks muchly.