London With a Teenager

Congrats, fellow parents. It seems like we’ve almost done it again. Primary aged kids go back tomorrow and secondary kids follow at their own, test-lined pace. After the 6 month school-hiatus of 2020, we’re all used to understating what we’ve achieved but consider this – this latest break from school has been double the length of the summer holidays but with no holiday clubs, no trips to the grandparents’, no playdates, no cinema, no McDonald’s, no soft play and, for our primary-aged ones, not even an option to legally meet up with another child in the park.

It’s insane, that’s what it is. Pre-2020 it would have been unprecedented. And all at no notice at all. When we got our kids home from school on 14th Dec then were told not to send them in on the 15th, then were supposed to send them back on the 16th but didn’t…we had no idea how long this next stretch would be. And that was just Eva. Roo had already been home for a week at that point. So in many ways, we were as ill-prepared as we were the first time round but this time there seemed to be an expectation that kids would actually do some work rather than just playing Fortnite all day.

We got into the groove in the end. We might have been ill-prepared but schools weren’t and the routine of live lessons and recorded ones began to give the kids’ days a soothing familiarity. Which is just as well because these 12 weeks landed neatly between the Go-lives of two phases of a project I’ve been working on so the idea of being able to take some time off work to homeschool full-time was a bit ludicrous. Don’t get me wrong  – I know we’re incredibly lucky to have jobs that we can do from home and I know our 12 weeks has been nowhere near as stressful as it has been for keyworkers who’ve still had to go to work every day. And our kids have been lucky, compared to the keyworker kids who have had to deal with the surreal challenges of virtualschool-in-actualschool.

Still tho, it’s been a bit hardgoing. And it’ll be nice to think that someone else will briefly be reponsible for one or both of them at some points during this week.  Let’s just hope they’re back for good this time…

Still January you say? And a particularly cold and rainy Saturday in Lockdown #3000? Lucky we have something to look forward to tonight. Yes, the LWAT Family have fallen hard for the Masked Singer, with the possible exception of the moody preteen who considers himself above all this ridiculousness. Because it is ridiculous. But that’s what makes it great.

I’ve always found it hard to get into TV singing shows because they’re mainly quite dull – once the no-hopers are eliminated early doors, it’s just week after week of earnest young things finding extra notes to put into songs you don’t really care about. And they’re also savage – as the actual singing is so dull, the entertainment comes from how mean the judges can be and how they can destroy someone’s dreams with a carefully-placed “meh”. It’s a bit close to home and deeply uncomfortable to watch.

Whereas, the Masked Singer has no malice in it whatsoever. There is a variety of competence levels on show – tho this season, the vast majority seem to be pretty good at the singing bit – but the judges lavish out praise and hold back on the abuse. The singing competition is a mere sideline in the whole glorious guessing game. And the contestants are already successful in their careers, so the stakes are anything but high.

Instead, the heated competition is betwen the four judges on one side and us at home on the other. Can we figure out who that giant purple blob is before they do? What did those words on the school desk mean? Why does Viking pronounce his name with the emphasis on the last syllable? What does any of it mean?

***From hereoin, spoilers for Season 1 are contained. I assume this won’t affect your life in any significant way***

To start with, I was sceptical about the whole show because I assumed it would be the usual tedious reality TV stars that always turn up on these things – your Big Brother and Gogglebox wannabes who are so desperate to keep their faces on TV that they’ll put a giant duck suit right over those faces. But then I saw on Facebook that Justin Hawkins of Darkness had been unveiled as Chameleon and suddenly my interest was caught. It would turn out that three of the singers would be from the indie/alternative world. That giant duck? Skin from Skunk Anansie. Skin! The angriest woman of the 90s! (And that’s a tough title, given how many angry women there were in the 90s) The angriest woman of the 90s singing opera in the giant duck suit! How is that not first class telly?

And the rest of the ‘slebs were no mere wannabes either. My kids hadn’t heard of most of them but they knew Ce Lo Green alright from Teen Titans Go! and they were suitably impressed that he would take time out of his schedule to bumble around in a monster costume for a few weeks.

Which is why we got straight into the second series. It gives me and Eva something to talk about in a month that is depressingly free of any kind of excitement. We can research together and rewatch the clues videos and scour the internet for fan theories.

Yes, I know it’s all a load of superficial pap but so is Bridgerton and I’m enjoying that too (NOT with Eva tho!) A bit of escapism is exactly what we need in this grey, cold month when the world outside is a dangerous and scary place. If you can overcome your scepticism and give it a go, you might just find yourself agreeing with me…

Disclaimer: Not a sponsored post. We’re just fans 😉

Happy New Year readers! And welcome to the January to end all Januaries. It’s largely cold and dark and we’re all stuck inside once again because of the plague. Truly it’s the most Januaryish month in history.

I’m not a fan of lockdown, as I probably expressed a lot last year…I understand why we’re being locked down again, I support it as an action that needs to be taken but you’ll never see my clicking my heels in delight at the prospect. I am simply not built for isolation.

But one of the worst aspects of lockdown last time was not my own situation but the conflicts on social media when everyone chose to work out their anxieties by criticising other people. It was totally understandable that it all happened that way – it was an extreme time and none of us had ever experienced anything similar. So we had a mass freak out and everyone’s freak outs exacerbated everyone else’s freak outs.

This time, it’s a little different. We should have more of a handle on how this work. So, in my mind, it’s slightly less excusable to attack others on social media just because of your own anxiety. Yet, it still happens. The guidelines allow for exercise with one other person once a day, which for many is a mental health lifesaver. I only manage it more like once a week because of work but still, a takeaway coffee and a stroll through the park with a friend at a safe distance has made this lockdown more bearable than the first. And this lockdown has, in effect, has been in place since November, in spite of the technical tier changes that went on during Advent.

The risk posed by two people from two households, both alike in dignity, taking a walk hasn’t been formally measured but given the mitigations – open air, distance, limited numbers – it seems fairly small. But the benefits can be huge. So it’s frustrating when I yet again see people on social media forbidding others to take that walk because the guidelines tell you to Stay At Home. Firstly, it’s not accurate because the activity is well within guidelines. Secondly, it’s treating other people’s mental health very carelessly. It’s giving others commands that may well plunge them into despair if their only chance of fresh air and company is snatched away. The prospect of endless weeks of confinement will causing lasting damage to some people. When I read my posts back from last Spring, I can feel the despair in them. Hardly surprising when I was grieving the loss of all my hopes and plans, as well as grieving a friend. So I’m taking steps to ensure I don’t get back into that state of mind.

Our words carry immense power and you can say or write them without ever knowing the full extent of their power. Someone could carry those words with them indefinitely while the originator could throw them out into the universe and move on. A political scuffle on a local, group recently led to several private messages to individuals that carried with them threats of legal action. I largely shrugged mine off but what if it had been sent to someone vulnerable? Someone who was already struggling to cope? It could have been disastrous. Our words matter and we need to be careful with them.

I wrote, almost a year ago, about the #bekind hashtag, which I thought was shallow and ineffective. I was right – as soon as the pandemic hit, people forgot all about #beingkind and starting attacking one another. I said at the time we need to underpin #kindness with proper understanding but here’s the thing – we didn’t. The crisis pushed us past that moment and our attention turned to other things. Maybe it’s time to revisit the idea of properly understanding other people’s situations. And if we don’t understand, hold back. Don’t jump in with both feet just to have Our Voice Heard. Consider what someone might be feeling, what the repercussions are. Treat other people’s mental health as if it was as important as their physical health.

Or maybe that’s too much to ask?