London With a Teenager

It’s the spaces I miss. You’d think that in lockdown, we would have all the space and time we could ever want but, although we have time, space is a precious commodity, both mental and physical.

Our lives used to have natural spaces built in. Train journeys to church and drama club, where we could just sit and stare out of the window. Walks to and from school, idly chatting about our days. Times when we didn’t have to be doing some kind of activity and could just kinda do nothing.

Now, our days have to be filled. As soon as the kids finish one activity, they need to have something else to do. If they’ve had too much screen time, we tell them to do something else but you can see them struggle to think of something fun to do that they’ve haven’t done 70 times in the last 70 days. They need constant stimulation and distraction to stop them dwelling on the bigger situation and that’s something that even the grown ups are doing to some extent.

I miss my commute and the buffer zone between work and parenting. I never realised how much I needed it until my buffer zone disappeared and then became something of an anti-buffer zone, with Eva lolling over me as I try to finish up for the day. The time pressure is off at the weekend but there’s still no space to just sit around and be. There are demands and requests. We are all bored and restless and not meant to function in this environment. We miss those natural spaces.

One day I’m sure we’ll rose-tint these days and remember them as quality family time while the children were just about still small enough to snuggle in while we worked. But right now, the present doesn’t feel rose-tinted. It feels stuffy and airless. It won’r be forever but it feels like forever.

I miss the spaces in between.

I haven’t blogged much recently. It’s hard to know why that is, given that this is a blog about being out and about around London and I’ve been out and about loads. I know I have because I got my Google Maps “Month in Review” e-mail today and it showed trips to at least three different convenience stores in the Highams Park area, sometimes with as little as three days in between outings. Somebody stop me.

Because yes, we are still home. It’s getting hard to tell when all the papers have been so positive this week:

but it doesn’t seem like any kind of real ending is in sight. So, what have we been up to in the last 50 days?

Well, there has been a lot of work. And the kids have spent hours on screens. We still aren’t homeschooling, despite pressures from pretty much every direction. Roo continues to self-school and Eva is unschooling. That’s pretty much the best we can hope for in these times.

But there have been some positives. Our food waste is down and our laundry basket is under control. I cleared out a cupboard and Nathan started clearing a path behind the shed, which Eva promptly got herself stuck in. We’re eating more fruit and vegetables because I’m having to do more frequent shops due to lack of delivery slots…..but on the flip side, I’m also consuming way more chocolate and Coke Zero. I’m still doing SwingTrain online and have been recording lots of silly songs about being in lockdown. You can hear them here if you want:

But the weeks drag and while we’re very grateful to be surviving a pandemic, it doesn’t feel like much more than surviving. And when bad things hit, which they have done, it’s really, really tough going to have to cope with them without the support of the community.

So if you’re feeling similarly, you are not alone. We all go through a sine wave of coping/not coping, sometimes on a daily basis. It might be starting to feel like normality but it’s still a crisis. It’s OK to feel lost and anxious. We all know why we’re doing this but it doesn’t always make it easier to do. All we can do is sit tight and wait for this thing to finally blow over.

I’ve just finished reading “After the Party” by Lisa Jewell. It’s a sequel to “Ralph’s Party” and is based in Herne Hill, an area I lived in for a few months back in 2002 when I first moved up to London and visited often in the later years of living in Camberwell and Kennington. Reading her descriptions of Brockwell Lido filled me with nostalgia for carefree summer days spent there before children – a stark contrast to the days this weekend which are the opposite of childfree and carefree. I loved Brockwell Park – even though there was that time when the water play was switched off and I got some extreme pregnant rage…and then there was another time when a 3-year-old Reuben started scooting down the hill and I couldn’t keep up with him because I had a tiny Eva in a sling. There were bad times in that park but good times too. So I was happy to revisit it in my imagination while I was reading.

I wasn’t quite so happy to read about all the people who were visiting it IRL this weekend. I know it’s been sunny but we really need to start taking this whole virus thing seriously. It defeats the object of all of us who have been sticking to the rules – 2m distance, once a day for exercise – when 3,000 people don’t. It would test my patience more than a little if these 17 (?) days of extreme isolation had been for nothing. I know I speak from a privileged position – we’re very lucky to have a garden and would never want to deprive anyone else of a bit of greenery but we have to share nicely and we have to be sensible. Large groups of people spending all day in the park are not going to see off a killer virus any time soon.

So, what’s the alternative? Well, we’ve found ways round things. Lots of zooming. Zoom housegroup, zoom playdates, zoom work socials, zoom choir socials…I have a corner of the sofa that’s kept almost entirely free of clutter so that I can record worship songs for church there and host Facebook live singalongs at the weekend. During the week, that same corner is my office space. It’s separate to my relaxing space on the other sofa or Nathan’s office space on the dining room table. I take most conference calls in Eva’s room because our room at the top of the house is too far to walk every time – I save that for one special conference call a week, and make sure I pull the blinds up to see across the horizon to the Promised Land of Enfield. I took one call in Reuben’s room – the height of luxury as it has an actual desk in it – but he made it clear that he needs his desk for himself so that’s not viable most of the time. I do online SwingTrain in the kitchen and if I’ve just cooked the kids’ dinner it feels like doing Hot Yoga. Basically, we have moved out entire four lives’ worth of activities into one smallish house.

But it’s what we have to do. And if you live in London, it’s what you have to do to. Today, Nathan and I travelled the length and breadth of London – from Upminster in the East to Uxbridge in the West, from High Barnet to the fiery pits of Morden. But only in jigsaw format:

And that’s our lives for the foreseeable. Let’s carry on going out for food shopping or exercise within the rules but let’s all buckle in for now…it’s gonna be a long ride.