Until we went into meltdown last year the sight of a disposable facemask was generally restricted to the realms of a dental or medical type nature……..
……. never would we have ever dreamt that they would ever become a common sight, discarded in the street without a single thought.
It’s not good ……. in fact it’s downright disgusting …….
…….. it gets poor Nigel down when he’s out on the school run, what are some people like?
Yesterday morning we got a phone call pertaining to be of great import from HM Revenue and Customs.
I took it, as Darrell and Nigel listened in to hear that HMRC were filing a lawsuit against us for unpaid taxes and if we didn’t arrange to make immediate payment for said unpaid taxes, an arrest warrant would be issued forthwith and our freedom, (already severely limited due meltdown), curtailed. Oh dear ……….
I could see Darrell visibly paling, but I had this, I gave him a reassuring wink and flicked my wrist dismissively, this was a scam…… I’ve watched YouTube.
I told them that as we had nothing better to do, due to being in meltdown, we would be more than happy to have our day in court, it would be a very welcome change of scene and asked if Judge Rinder could possibly hear our case as we absolutely LOVE him and we knew he would listen to our case with all due diligence and reach a fair verdict so there would be no need for any appeals or anything like that, we would serve our bird and then return to society much changed people ………
And ……… since we’d kept robustly to meltdown rules we hadn’t had any visitors since Christmas, a knock on the door followed by several hulking uniformed officers of the law, brandishing a “hot” warrant for our arrest could be quite romantic, so we’d have the kettle on and Hob Nobs at the ready.
I also asked about the possibility of a strip search as young Nigel might need to change his vest……. the line went quiet for while, although I could still hear a lot of other busy “HMRC” workers in the background making similar calls …… the aforementioned police were going to have a busy day ahead of them, what with all those warrants etc ……..
…… and then the voice came back and said ……. “Very funny…. crazy people!” ……. and then put the phone down on me, the cheek!
So, no wonderfully exciting dash in a flashing, wailing police car, our heads covered by blankets, no recorded interviews in separate rooms, no tapping code out on the cell bars to each other to keep our spirits high, no promising to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God …….
……. and, I didn’t even get to tell him that we’d never earned enough, even at the Girls School, to ever come close to paying any tax! What am I like?
School dinners, in a very round about away, have a lot to answer for as far as our occasional Friday nights are concerned …….
Let’s just say that until recently Young Master Bertie had been very much a stranger to “the pizza”, until he was urged to try a bit at school by his favourite dinner lady who then presented him with a special sticker for eating it all up, all this has had a very profound affect on the little fella, as it seems that delivery of said “treat” is now a regular occurrence on a Saturday night up at Snake Mountain.
Now, although we are no strangers to the odd pizza ourselves, we are total strangers to “a pizza delivery” and after hearing all Bertie’s wide eyed tales of ordering pizza from the Dominoes up the road, Nigel was determined that we should not to be found wanting during any such conversations in the future …………
…… so begged and beseeched Darrell and I to be allowed to order one, two or even three for ourselves, so now on the odd Friday night, after the last school run of the week, we find ourselves quite proficient aficionados of the “build your own” pizza …………. and then once our order has gone, Nigel sits glued to the pizza tracker, giving us an in-depth, blow by blow account of our teas progress until our buzzer is buzzed.
However, Darrell still has his standards to uphold and Nigel is sadly not allowed to eat his pizza from the box ……….
…….. he must have it on a warmed plate, but, as it’s a treat using fingers and not a knife and fork is permitted, what are we like?
Well, Nigel’s first rota-ed school run since meltdown was, naturally emotional with so many days lost, but nether the less, it was wonderful to feel a little bit of normality slowly creep back into our lives.
I knew he was a apprehensive by the number of nervous wees he had before he eventually set out, in fact I insisted he took a drink with him as I was frightened he might come over all dehydrated before he’d even got to the school gates.
But once he was there and joined the familiar, safe distanced queue at around fifteenth position he says he started to chill, despite ending up at around twenty-fifth position with all the illicit queue jumping when said gates were finally opened! It made him smile, it felt familiar and ordinary …….. and anyway, they would get a shock one day when he would be at the front, even if it meant he would have to start out extra, extra early! What is he like?
Back in December the trees were bare and gardens bereft of colour, now the trees were in full blossom and bulb spotting was de rigueur, but the great clumps of mistletoe were still hanging from the branches of some trees, perhaps minus their berries, but still a perfect excuse for a few kisses underneath to say I love you.
There were yellow cars to yell “yellow car” whenever you saw one, old familiar tree stumps to jump up and down from or sit a little while on, plus all those lines of manhole or meter covers to leap across ….. not to mention those pudgy little hands patting Uncle Nigel’s pockets to check to see if he had bought them a few treats “to help keep their energy up” on their walk.
It felt soooooooooooo good, when home schooling seemed a million miles away and his head didn’t hurt anymore! Happy days!
We haven’t seen any action on our bridge for weeks now, we just assumed all had gone well with it’s renovations and that was it ……
…… so imagine Nigel’s tangible and palpable excitement when he spotted this band of merry men on the other side of the river this morning ……..
……. all garbed in full florescence and pith helmets, fully equipped with harnesses, ladders and a dingy.
Needless to say Nigel bagsed himself a ring side seat ……..
…….barely able to contain himself when they brought the aforementioned dinghy (sorry Mr D!!) over to our side complete with said ladders …………
……..but, it got even better than that ………. something Nigel had been really hoping for, but never dreamed he’d actually see in real life from our lounge window ……..
…… precarious and very impressive dangling akimbo, without a safety net or buoyancy aides….
……. plus, they didn’t even bother to switch off the trains, which were thundering over in both directions. Never once did we see anyone grabbing hold of a girder for grim death, instead they just continued to take their meter readings or whatever they were doing. Let’s just say Nigel and I were more than impressed, however Darrell said he simply couldn’t bear to look and took himself for a “little lie down” until everyone was safely back on dry land.
Sadly, there was no carefree, unfettered abseiling or alfresco jumping of a bungee type nature ….. that might then possibly require some dramatic, high speed, dingy action …….
……. but we did have one very happy and contented Nigel ……..
…….. who then went on to do the school run with his head somewhere way up in the clouds until he had to concentrate on getting the little ones safely home. What is he like?
Yesterday, we received a most excellent distraction from our missing home schooling, in the guise of a letter of great import from the government ……
….. pertaining to our completing and submitting our personal and household details to the 2021 Census. It goes without saying that we didn’t want to be found wanting in it’s filling in, it being our first time and I suppose it will establish our part of history when people look through it in hundreds of years time, researching life in the 2000’s.
Darrell couldn’t wait to input our secret passcode into the census website to show we were ready willing and able to perform our national duty …….
…… perhaps a little too keen as his first attempt was greeted by a “unable to be found” message, however another go got him through and he entered all our personal data, I have to say, with great aplomb and confidence for a first timer, he said it wasn’t too onerous a task …….. however after he’d pressed the submit button Nigel noticed something on our letter that we’d all missed first time round in our excitement ……..
……. we think in our haste we may have submitted prematurely and should have possibly waited until the appointed date of 21st March …… oh the shame!
We await Boris’s confirmation e-mail, with baited and worried breath
PS/NB/FYA ….. Poor Darrell, there was no doing with him after that and had to have one of his lie downs for the rest of the afternoon. However, Nigel came up trumps again, finding the above paragraph in the pamphlet included with our letter …… we/Darrell are in the clear, but as a precaution no visitors will be allowed to cross our portals for the whole of 21st March, so that our good name can be upheld. Darrell, you’ll be glad to know, is now feeling much better and has been able to keep down a little baked egg custard since hearing that his actions have been exonerated ……….. what is he like?
There is a moral to this story …….
It was weird waking up this morning to a (normal?) week without a sniff of home schooling and all it’s ensuing brain ache, there was just the glorious waft of one of Darrell’s full Englishes on the go …….
There was no mention of a timetable or thought for endless photos that needed taking or the editing of videos and audio recordings, where I for one simply loathed the sound of my own voice.
We even featured in a few, all evidence that we’d done everything that was expected of us and not found wanting in any department of an educational type nature. Now it’s sooooooo spooky and quiet, we have even remarked to each other that we can now actually hear our selves think, but in a weird way we are already missing it too …….
It’s been emotional, as we said last Friday ……. especially after we found Iris’s Baby Banana lovingly tucked up and fast asleep in the corner of her bedroom on our last day …… she’d had to “create” a new book character for World Book Day from a potato, but as we didn’t have a spare potato, as Darrell was doing baked potatoes for tea, she’d chosen to use a banana instead.
Never before has a banana had such a back story or been so well cared for. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, poor Darrell had to go for one of his long walks to compose himself …… special days ……. but onwards and upwards, Nigel has made sure he will be first to head the school run rota tomorrow …….
…….. where no doubt, a whole new set of wonderful adventures about to begin!
Today will be a very bittersweet occassion, especially for Nigel, as it will mark our last day of home schooling (fingers crossed), on Monday all the children will go back to school, including our beloved Iris and Bertie.
I know there will be uncontrollable tears and barely disguised blowing of noses as Nigel rings the school bell at three o’clock this afternoon. Nigel wouldn’t be Nigel without totally embracing said responsibilities with all his heart and soul since the start of term in January. No matter how hard (especially the maths) he has performed his unfaltering duty for Queen, country, niece and nephew.
I have told him that we/he should be soooooooo proud that for the past six weeks or so we have been part of living history, in real life.
In years to come Iris and Bertie will regale their children and perhaps even their grandchildren with tales of a time when they couldn’t go to school for month after month and were instead taught at home by their long gone uncles, to wit us!
Next week we return to a masked, sanitised, safe distanced, treats in our pocket school run once more. This will be just the very start of our slow release from meltdown and getting back to “normal” journey …….. there is a long way to go, there will be ups and downs no doubt, but hopefully we’ll get there.
