There’s nothing quite like morning cuddles on the sofa with Mummy. Adjusting to homeschooling had been hard for everyone so we mixed it up and had a slightly lazy start to the day. A break in the routine but, frankly, we’d earned it.
I forget the build up to the conversation, but I was telling the children how amazing Megan had been by looking after me and making sure I recovered properly. Genevieve’s response was brilliant: “Mummy made you better so you bought her smudge”. At this point I should probably explain that Genevieve called fudge “smudge” for some unknown (but adorable) reason. The comment had Megan and I giggling for a good few minutes – Genevieve can sometimes be a nightmare but she makes up for everything with cute moments like that one.
Once we were up and running with the homeschooling, James really got in to his shapes and counting activity. Megan drew half a colourful rocket on the whiteboard. First James had to mirror the other half and then had to count the shapes. He was exceedingly proud of himself once he’d completed it.
Having not properly left the house for over three weeks I was determined to walk around the block by the end of the day. Not a long way in the grand scheme of things, but really quite a distance given how inactive I’d been up to that point. The kids needed to stretch their legs too so I though that, after lunch, the three of us would go for a nice stroll together. Some quality time with the children to make up for all the time I’d been ill. However, I hadn’t accounted for how long it would take the little darlings to get ready.
I can’t now recall exactly what took so long, but after a herculean effort (and some less-than-subtle cajoling) we were out of the house. I knew that rain was forecast for the afternoon but, according to all the websites, we were safe for at least an hour… and that’s roughly how long it had taken for them to get ready. Perhaps you can already foresee what happened next.
We turned left out of the house and wandered up towards the green. After about 150m we stopped to check in on the neighbourhood monkey. Rather than taking his usual position sat on the driveway, the monkey was instead safely ensconced in the front room window. His activity of the day seemed to be cross-stitch (it wasn’t that easy to see) and he’d also prepared a huge sign saying “Happy 100th Captain Tom” in honour of Captain Tom Moore.
Now call me crazy, but I was sure that the monkey looked smugger than usual safely tucked away in his house. And he had every right to be as at that very moment the heavens opened. This was no April shower – it was a mighty rain storm! The children were exceptionally quick at letting me know they didn’t like it (despite having on rain coats and wellies), so we turned around and headed back home. My mission to walk around the block had failed, but at least I’d made it out of the house!
Over dinner the skies began to clear again. Megan very kindly suggested that I try and go for another walk while she put the children to bed. My wife is an absolute superstar! The children were happy with the arrangement as three new Rob Biddulph books had arrived that afternoon (the inspiration behind their Nancy dinosaur drawings a couple of weeks ago) and Megan was going to read them all three. Happy days!
So off I went. The sun was out and there was a beautiful fresh breeze – I couldn’t have asked for better conditions. It felt incredibly odd being out of the house. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it felt overwhelming, but it was certainly emotional to finally be able to do a normal activity. To add to my slightly wobbly emotional state, as I reached the green a sky-spanning vivid rainbow appeared suddenly. I’m far from being a spiritual person (understatement of the lockdown!) but the symbolism couldn’t have been more on point (especially as I’d already walked past countless rainbows proudly on display in our neighbours’ windows). Utterly gorgeous!
I finished the lap around the block and was astonishingly knackered when I got home. It’s amazing how quickly my fitness had disappeared – I had been all set for a half marathon at the end of March and, under other circumstances, would have been running a 10km with Megan the following week. I knew that the fitness would come back – it was just a matter of allowing myself the time to recover properly. I was still far from over the illness and it was going to be a long, slow journey.
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