guest art 2

Its Mothers; Day.  Here are the drawings from my son (the hound) and daughter (herself as a toddler with her mum).

The kids are home now for months.  We have been able to set aside part of a room as a classroom for them.  They like that.  But we both must go into work daily.  They resist the school places put aside for them.  Will they work?  Will they eat proper lunch?  There is discussion about eating up meals rather than raiding the fridge and cupboards.  Although we know there is genuinely no shortage of food, actually obtaining it may become less sure on a day to day basis.  Nationally, uncertainty itself creates the circumstance.

I have memories of my childhood in London without a fridge, or actually cupboards I think, when we shopped daily for what we could afford.  Later, in Swansea, the teachers went on strike for months and we stayed and learned at home.  In Poland, where my father worked for a time, power was so scarce that I saw the Milky Way for the first time and watched the perseid meteorite shower in awe.  A year or so later, back in London, the lights would flicker to warn us to get out the candles before electricity failed.  Life is always uncertain: perhaps, though, that is the true definition of being middle class, that sometimes we go for a long while with the illusion otherwise.

Stay safe everyone.  If you can stay at home, please do so.  All our lives now depend on our maintaining distance between us and washing our hands.

There is hope amidst all this.