The Paroking Diaries: Blog 14: Sockless Teenagers and Noah’s Ark

We have reached rock-bottom at the homestead. It’s raining and there’s not even a Noah’s Ark on the horizon to brighten things up – although zoos are open soon, so maybe the animals will pile in and set sail for somewhere more stimulating then Coronaland or being gazed at social distancing style by people that have been locked up for months. I wouldn’t blame them. The ‘teenager’ hasn’t worn a pair of socks for 12 weeks and this is not only because pairs are lacking here but is due to a downward slide into ‘slob’ status. I am not helping this because I have got to the point when no sock wearing means less washing. The food is also an issue because everyone seems to be in a permanent state of hunger, whether growing or not – I am tired of policing the fridge foraging and have just let them graze like the hyenas until there is nothing left. 

Today, was a new low point when I nodded an affirmation of the sausage roll that the teenager was stuffing in between meals and asked if he wanted to join me watching Loose Women. He was almost tempted until Ruth Langsford started a discussion on why the panel could no longer share makeup. I thought it was quite interesting and perhaps some light relief from the discussions on whether opening amusement parks and zoos is the right thing to prioritise over children’s education. And in answer to this I would say why can’t we have an open-air school at the zoo or throw in some maths equations whilst on the Nemesis and keep everyone happy. Perhaps too there could be an educational hub within the changing rooms at Primark to keep the little minds active. Multi-tasking ‘init.’

Lethargy is an issue. The ‘against all odds’ daughter has been slightly rescued from a slip into permanent slobbishness by the introduction of a rotational maths/English zoom lesson. This is good for two reasons, she can’t argue about wearing her pyjamas all day because there is a visibility issue and it means that we don’t have to endure the daily screaming match when I attempt to teach her. We have returned to the amphibians today and subtraction by ‘frog jumping’ but now the teaching point is to move away from those with ribbed legs and attempt some minusing without jumping over lily pads. She is asked to sort out sums into ‘frog’ or ‘not frog’. We are doing this while playing ‘Times Like These’ in the background, just to set the mood of melancholy perfectly and get it into perspective that I am spending a Wednesday morning weighing up whether maths is about tailless slimy creatures or anything to do with the bedrock of the economy. Rita Ora sings, ‘It’s a One Way Motorway’ and I feel she must be looking in on the maths sheet because every sum is in the ‘frog’ column and the ‘against all odds’ daughter refuses to entertain the fact that subtraction can be done as a mental exercise of segmenting tens and units and minusing them. The class is asked to come up with different terms for subtraction. One of the girl’s chips in, ‘Compound subtraction’. The silence on the zoom chat is palpable and the teacher brings the chat back into the realms of ‘average’ by saying, ‘Take away is another term. I like to have one of those every Friday night.’

In English she reads some character descriptions of Mario, Luigi and Bowser and looks up unknown words in a dictionary classifying them as verbs, nouns or adjectives. I offer my Griffin Savers Oxford Dictionary which has a publishing stamp saying 1984. She quaffs at the very idea and says, ‘Don’t be Silly Mum. We are supposed to use an online dictionary,’ because real books with pages are outlawed in modern teaching methods and particularly at a time when libraries are closed. We look up, ‘lure’ and ‘fangs’ – I wonder if we have slipped into Halloween and I don’t know about it because quite frankly it could also be Christmas at this stage, so who knows and the calendar now has everything crossed out with no date against ‘term time’ or ‘school holidays ’ - it’s just one big slobfest day after the next.

We should be attempting one of the many other activities that have been set but the rain refuses to let the general feeling of apathy go, so I suggest a film. She chooses Frozen II and I put it on, but they start speaking in Spanish and the ‘husband’ is on one of many of his calls, maybe to Noah’s Ark to see if we can get a cruise in for the summer holidays. We continue to watch it in Spanish because it is beyond my cerebral powers to work out how to turn on the English voice over. I wonder if she will kick up a fuss because she continues to stare at the screen and doesn’t really complain and the ‘teenager’ who I have called upon for help can’t work it out either and his feet look like they are turning blue because he still continues the hatred of sock wearing despite the downturn in the weather. I knock on the husband’s door and gesticulate to him that the film is in another language and can he help. He looks super stressed because I am not speaking but I am waving my hands whilst hand gesturing a remote control. I think, he thinks, I am asking him if we can do some X-box gaming because to be honest this is the desperation of the entertainment levels that we have reached and I am considering joining the ‘teenager’ and his sockless friends in a Fortnite marathon just to tick off some more of the Coronatime.

It’s almost time to collect the ‘middle child’ from school. I am thinking at this point that with all the U-turns on whether schools will open or close, like ever, that perhaps I am lucky to have one third of my children in formal education. At least they must wear socks there and you don’t have to work out how to explain what the word ‘lure’ means without it descending into a description of Crime Watch. I leave the ‘against all odds’ girl staring wide-eyed at the Spanish version of Frozen II and I reflect that this is the closest I am going to get to a holiday abroad this year – still if there is any sense in the world the Nightingale hospitals may open as summer schools and the ‘husband’ and I can take that ticket on Noah’s Ark and set sail for anywhere that isn’t Coronaslobland.

By Annie Hayes