Corona Lockdown week 8: Stay alert, it’s back to school in June

Read the rest of my Corona Lockdown diaries here.

A quick preamble: If you’d never before noticed, I am not a fan of the Tory government in any way, shape or form. I am in fact what you might call a lefty snowflake, and I wear that badge proudly. You don’t have to agree with me, but I don’t care.

I think they have done an absolutely abysmal job of containing Coronavirus and protecting our population, and given we’ve more deaths than any other country in Europe I don’t think anyone can really argue against that fact. Their priorities have never been saving the lives of the vulnerable but the livelihoods and wealth of the very rich.

Now apart from the odd dig here and there, I generally do try and keep my blog free of politics. This is not because I don’t feel strongly about them or I don’t feel it’s the right place, as of course it’s my place to do with as I wish, but because I don’t feel the need to argue with strangers; it’s annoying and I reserve that for Twitter. Plus, it’s not usually very funny.

However, life is political. So just a little warning that if you’re a Boris fan, you might just want to stop reading this particular post. And maybe have a word with yourself.

So where are we now…

Last week, the British public were promised an important announcement regarding the Coronavirus lockdown. This was immediately translated by the Tory press as ‘Hurrah! Lockdown is going to be lifted! Go frolic with your friends in the street this bank holiday, give your elderly mum a hug and do the conga but don’t blame the government when you all die because remember they told you to stay at home even though we are definitely telling you otherwise right now because the strategy is still herd immunity, but that made us unpopular so we are doing it by stealth’.

After the sunny weekend had come and gone, we were told that the message had changed from the easy-to-follow-if-you’re-not-a-prick ‘Stay at Home’ to ‘Stay Alert’; possibly one of the most stupid and vague thing I’ve ever heard. Alert?! For what exactly?

Then on Sunday evening, rather than the usual press conference, we were played a pre-recorded fourteen minute long video of our illustrious leader actually showing his face to bumble and waffle his way through an update in a way reminiscent of a GCSE student trying to pad out an essay to hit a word count.

The main outcomes (I think) were:

1. You can now get back to work, if you can’t work from home, but don’t use public transport unless you have to. So, a bit like before really.

2. From Wednesday, you can exercise outside, you can go sit in a park, or something, but don’t, but do. Oh and you can’t go visit your family. Only in Tory Britain would you be encouraged to spend time with your boss before your loved ones.

3. And then, if all goes well, kids will go start to back to school on June 1st after the half term holidays, but only reception and years one and six.

There was talk of schools re-opening in the news early last week, and at the time I reserved opinion because as I see it, there’s enough to get angry about without worrying about things that haven’t yet been announced. However I can tell you now, as a parent with two children in reception and year one my thoughts are fuck that.

My children will not be going back to school in June.

Whilst I appreciate that I haven’t exactly enjoyed the lockdown, I’m desperate for some me time, and homeschooling is making me crazier by the day, ultimately their health, our health, and the health of their teachers is much more important.

Children may not suffer from the virus, but there is currently no evidence to suggest that they can’t carry it. Teachers and support staff are not expendable, they have families and children of their own and should not have to put their lives on the line for the government. Selfishly, I want my children to be able to see their grandparents without worrying that they are going to pass on something. My Grandad is turning 100 in ten days; I want them to be able to see him at some point this year and if they are going to school and mingling and touching things then it will never be safe to see him.

I appreciate that the schools do have to go back sometime; but I object to this seemingly arbitrary handling of it.

Year R and 1 are going to be the most difficult to socially distance. My kids are great at moving out of the way when strangers approach, they’re brilliant at washing their hands to the point that Happy Birthday is probably going to give me panicked flashbacks for years, but I’m telling you now that even if there was enough room to practice social distancing in a school setting, they won’t be able to do it. Not with their friends and teachers. They can’t even stop catching nits FFS.

They are also probably the least important years in terms of education. At 4 and 6, they wouldn’t even be at school in many European countries. They’ll catch up.

I know that there are people who will have no choice but to send their children back; many, many people who have to work and will be glad for the news. In no way am I calling out their parenting, but I have the luxury of choice and hopefully by choosing not to send my children, the chance of the children and teachers who are in school catching and passing on the virus will be lowered.

Anyway, I’m not going to get unduly worried about it.

The unions have already come out and said that they do not support the opening, and a number of petitions have been circulated.

I suspect that following the number of people who went out and celebrated this weekend, the second wave of the virus isn’t far off, and the school opening won’t happen this side of September anyway…