I don't like this game.

Well THIS is intense non?

I’m well aware that I live in a total bubble, here in my cushioned corner of West London. This lesson was foisted on me by Brexit and the election, which confirmed to me that clearly I have no idea what’s actually going on for most people in this country. And for this reason I’m less surprised at the disparity of reactions to this pandemic. Even today (Friday) I’ve had messages from friends that range from ‘see you in three months’ to ‘are you up for a playdate tomorrow or are you self-isolating lol!’ For me, it’s really not hard to know where to put myself; we’ve been self-isolating since the beginning of the week and will continue to do so for two more weeks, along with most of our neighbours, in order (along with the obvious) to give our children the chance of a social life some time in the near future. It’s been extremely challenging, emotionally, for MOI (sob) and as always being in the garden has helped enormously. I took the children out of school on Monday, and have been struggling with ‘homeschooling’ since. Every day our best bit has been in the garden, despite the fact that (as many of you know) I LOATHE gardening with children and always will. Here are my…. OUR gardening forays this week.

…and before I begin, I am SO very sorry not to have replied to any of your emails last week…as you will learn things have been a bit bonkers. But I appreciate every single message and will set aside time to get back to everyone next week.

Monday

I am ready. I have a timetable, and a list of questions on my daughter’s current reading, and several educational games to play with the smaller ones. Everyone is quite enthused because of the novelty factor and my son declares that he likes home school better than actual school (not sure how to respond to that). Anyway, predictably I am bored silly and extremely irritable by 11am. 11am is when I would usually take a break from what I am doing and have breakfast and possibly even a sit-down. As you can imagine, neither of those things happen. Instead I am having to feign excitement at someone’s drawing whilst simultaneously marking a maths paper. I am reminded of a time about a thousand years ago when I was at boarding school, in a mixed age dorm of four, and the oldest of us had complained about her blackheads enough that we remaining three had hightailed it down to the Body Shop and bought her a blackhead remover thing. Do you remember those? They looked like miniscule spoons, with a hole in the centre, and the idea was that you pushed the bowl of the ‘spoon’ down on the skin and the blackhead would emerge through the hole in the centre. We set about trying to get these blackheads out of her nose…pushing the thing harder and harder into her poor face and laughing our heads off. Not a single blackhead was dislodged, and we three became ever more zealous… “let me try!” “No, let ME try!”. I remember she just sat there, laughing and laughing and saying over and over “I don’t like this game….THIS IS NOT A GOOD GAME!”

Well, that’s how I feel.

I push everyone out into the garden and we sow seeds - rudbeckia and fennel. I try ‘stremely hard not to snatch the things away and do it myself…and I just about manage it. It keeps everyone busy for at least half an hour. And then I teach them how to mow the lawn and then they bounce on the trampoline and water things that don’t need watering while I finish mowing.

So basically fine, but like my blackhead friend, I don’t like this game.

Tuesday

Today we begin by writing a story one word at a time (Ugh)…they enjoy it though, so that’s okay, and then we draw colour wheels and paint them. My favourite bit is the look on their faces when they realise that mixing secondary colours will ONLY EVER MAKE BROWN…ha! But we do get quite into the TYPES of brown, and how different they are , which I guess is sort of interesting? Then I do a shop where they have to give me coins to pay for certain items. Afterwards I look for my money and realise that SOMEONE has stolen some. I know I had at least three pounds in the kitty and they’re saying I only had one. They are totally ganging up on me and gaslighting me. I push them into the car and drive to Richmond Park where there isn’t a single moment when one of them isn’t crying or whining or furious. We sit on a log to eat our sandwiches and there is a brief moment of blissful silence which I stupidly spoil by asking them to huddle up so I can take a photo (I mean LOOK at my three children and how lovely they are and how WELL I am dealing with homeschooling them!) The smaller one obediently moves up and gets stung by a nettle. We look for dock leaves amid the howls. The day is saved by quite a bit of fun when we wash the car on our return, and a delicious five minutes planting a couple of shrubs in the front garden.

I go to bed shocked at the lack of even a five minute window to do my own stuff and resolve to make sure there is a LOT more TV tomorrow. I am learning, but I still don’t like this game.

Wednesday

I wake up with a hangover. Make of that what you will.

We play memory games and then we make a cake (or I hide while THEY make a cake), and then I can’t bear the noise any more, and the cakey fug and I push them all outside, very much against their will to plant pea-shoots, which they actually really enjoy. I don’t know, but handling compost and watering it and putting seeds onto it, and covering them up and writing labels and stepping back and being satisfied and hopeful just never gets old does it? Whilst this is all happening I do a LOT of weeding…extremely satisfactory. I pull out all the brown bits from last years iris sibirica, and remove quite a bit of bramble and bindweed in the process. I manage for a moment to look at them and ignore the mess and I’m ridiculously happy and thrilled to have been handed the opportunity to slow down and include them in my life and the things I love. I get a bit misty and tearful and then they start bickering and I am JUST SO BLOODY TIRED so I go inside and lock the doors. After a bit they are banging asking to be let back in and I close my eyes and ignore them and eat a lindor bar, slowly, in front of them while they bang and look at me with their forlorn eyes.

I don’t like this game.

Thursday

Slow start. I’ve woken with the realisation that

1. I don’t like this game

2. I really can’t do this

My phone is so laden with whatsapp messages about homeschooling and timetables and best practice and RESOURCES that I swear it actually feels PHYSICALLY heavier to pick up….like a brick. I stay in bed an extra half hour and don’t look at any of the messages. Instead, I open my neglected emails and find a sweet idea for making a bird feeder out of a grapefruit. I wonder how it would feel to forget all about the phonics and the maths and the reading and the stuff and just make a birdfeeder instead. And that’s what we do…(not eldest…she’s still obsessed with not falling behind) but myself and the smaller ones empty a grapefruit and then fill it with birdseed and string it up. We stand inside for a long long time with our binoculars, waiting for a bird to appear. None do, but we don’t care.

We spend the afternoon in the park, and we stop off at the garden centre which is heaving with humans, panic buying seeds (good). I have still not managed to send out the two invoices that were on my list on Monday. It’s simple. Just do an invoice and send it. Haven’t had time. Not a moment. But I would actually happily forfeit those two payments for half a day alone. Just my myself. Honestly, un-married, childless me would have had ZERO problems with a lockdown. ZERO. In fact, she would have adored and relished the excuse to be reclusive and antisocial. The struggle was always to MAKE myself go out into the world…to appear in some way ‘normal’. But children don’t put up with any of that.

I don’t like this game.

Friday

Not coping.

I spend the morning crying in the garden. Proper ugly big flabby sobs into my tea. My poor eldest is so desperately sad about the fact that she might not get the year six end she was working towards and looking forward to…I am so very sad for her. She thrives at school, with her friends. She dislikes being with her mother. I get it. I dislike myself too. She is looking for someone to blame. I am the nearest. So be it. But things take a massive upturn when we pile outside for our street’s ‘Together But Apart’ time. We all bring a cup of something warm outside and stand in the street at a safe distance (a broom-handle apart is the rule) and have a chinwag. Suddenly the heaviness is lifted and I realise that we can do this. The children run about petting everybody’s dogs and I am massively, pathetically grateful for our marvellous neighbours and our street Whatsapp.

My local garden centre (which is doing a roaring trade right now) is doing free deliveries in the local area, and three enormous bags of compost arrive, for more childhood gardening endeavours in the weeks to come. I plant a foxglove that I couldn’t resist buying yesterday, and then the smallest comes out as I am just about to prune the hydrangeas. She asks to help, and instead of telling her no, I give her the secateurs and show her how to cut beneath two healthy fat buds. Her little hands are too small to use the secs with one hand, so she uses both, as if she were holding shears. It’s scary because she might cut the wrong bit, or indeed, chop my finger off (I’m the one holding the stem and showing her where to cut) but of course she is fine, and she does a brilliant job, and we are both proud and happy afterwards. Then she goes back to her watering can thing….watering everywhere EXCEPT where I want her to water, and then she picks up the broom and starts sweeping, and I realise suddenly that if only I will just slow down…if only I will capitulate and let things be other than how they are in my head…if only I will just GIVE IN, then actually there’s a lot to like about this game.

All the good things dear friends.

x Laetitia

PS there are no blogs this week, (and frankly I don’t know if there will be any blogs for a while). If you’re stuck at home with children there is a story highlight on my Instagram called ‘kids gardening’ with lots of suggestions for easy projects. And if you’re stuck at home WITHOUT children (lucky you!) then there is my book ‘The Five Minute Garden’ with lots of suggestions for stuff to do while you have extra time.