“What’s wrong with knowing what you know now and not knowing what you don’t know until later?” Winnie the Pooh

What a strange year it has been. In no time flat, things became at once very, very simple and very, very complicated.

I would be lying if I said I leapt out of bed every day eager to get home school started. I’m definitely not cut out for teaching. I knew this already. But it’s good to have things confirmed by the universe. 

Small One and I did have some breakthrough moments at Magpie Primary. The first time she remembered 8 x 6 was certainly cause for celebration. But it was also very hard work. The coffee breaks (me, not her) and periodic screeching (both of us) increased as time went on and I was very relieved when term ended. The call of Disney + and a bowl of popcorn was often too loud to be ignored.

There was also an awful lot of listlessness. I didn’t know I had access to such a bottomless pit of listlessness. But there were days and days of just not being able to achieve very much of anything at all. It was like being partially anaesthetised. I would think of a list of all the things I wanted to do but then would rule out all the things I couldn’t do because of lockdown restrictions and then would find mysterious reasons why I couldn’t do any of the others either and suddenly it was 8pm and no-one in the house had eaten since breakfast. 

Then, conversely, there were the bursts of unexpected productivity. I proudly fixed the two broken tiles on our front step that have been missing since we moved in. That was a big day. Against my better judgement I also cleaned the oven. I am pretty sure I’ve read somewhere that it’s actually better not to clean your oven. It makes it seasoned or something. Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard. Anyway. I did it. Like I said, I knew it was a bad idea. It is the worst job on the planet. Surely. It just seems wrong. It makes such a colossal mess of the kitchen. It’s more of a grime-moving operation. The oven is sparkling but the rest of the kitchen looks like you’ve been wrestling with a grease-flinging dervish. 

But I girded myself and I cleaned it. I was so determined. I took photos of myself cleaning it. I thought maybe the Mayor might want to call around to see the before and afters. Everything was going swimmingly. Admittedly the rest of the kitchen looked like a back street chippy after cleaning out the fryers. But I was about to get to that. 

Then disaster struck. I was carefully screwing the glass panel back into the oven door when there was a sharp crack. What was that? I wondered. There was a pause. No. It must have been my imagination. I reached for the screwdriver again but before I could apply it to the task in hand the panel spontaneously exploded into a shower of square shaped safety glass diamonds. In other circumstances they might have been considered beautiful. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were in the dog’s water bowl, in the sink, stuck to the oven grease on the worktops and spread in a sparkling arch on the floor 15 feet in every direction. 

Beloved rushed in at the sound of my anguished cry and the unmistakable sound of shattering glass and was met with the post-apocalyptic scene that had replaced our kitchen. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow but simply reached for the brush and pan with practised resignation. 

Sigh. Surely it was the universe speaking again. Never ever ever under any circumstances ever clean the oven ever again. Ever. And you can’t argue with the universe. 

A few clicks and a hole burnt in the debit card to the tune of £60 and a new panel was ordered. Problem solved. If it wasn’t for the fact that we’re still finding broken glass. Apparently it’s stuck somewhere inside the oven door so every time we open it another couple of pieces drop out. It’s exciting. Like a bit of danger spice being sprinkled on every meal.

 As the lockdown restrictions have eased coffee shops and restaurants have opened once more and my odyssey into being an aged Barista has resumed. The cat has been greatly bemused by my early morning starts. She knows I am not usually productive before 10.00am. She sits and watches me getting dressed. Bolt upright. Front paws together. Tail wrapped neatly around her, staring at me with narrowed incredulous eyes. 

“Are you sure you’re getting up?” she seems to say. “Really? Are you feeling ok?”

When I persist she stalks off with a tut to lie in the warm place I have left in the bed. “Well, I did try.”

I’ve had a bit more training now. There are often (albeit fleeting) moments when I actually feel that I might get through the shift without dying. The infant baristas on the other hand are learning their trade at the speed of knots. They are a jolly bunch. They switch between activities with dizzying speed whilst simultaneously talking about their weekend and music I’ve never heard of. They are the same colour at the end of their shift as they were at the start. I am generally a hint o’blotch with wisps of hair sticking to my forehead. My favoured phrase is, “Sorry, could you run that past me again?”

On the plus side, I have managed not to critically scald myself though it’s probably only a matter of time. I did fail to wrestle a cage full of empty boxes over the step that leads to the bin yard. It leapt back and ferociously stabbed me in the shin. My manager found me hopping in the corner muttering to myself and asked if I was okay. 

“Fine,” I said fake brightly through my gritted teeth whilst seeing stars. I definitely wasn’t crying. I think a stray coffee ground got in my eye.

Lockdown victory, however, was definitely achieved in Small One’s room. Everything she likes is tiny. Every surface becomes quickly swamped in battalions of small animals, small people, small things she has made out of tinfoil, things she has rescued out of crackers, things she has found in the street or got free in a Happy Meal. Lego, Playmobil, Sylvanians, Barbie accessories, landslides of magazines and books, art materials, hair clips, paper clips, cat toys. She lines her sanctuary like a squirrel’s drey until there is but one small path leading to her bed, barely visible through her TY cuddly toy collection and her knotted nest of tangled fleece blankets in various sizes. 

When she was little I would simply wait until she went to school and send unwanted items to the land of the disappeared while she was away. She never knew a thing about it. Now she is older I daren’t touch a thing. It looks like a magical unicorn vomited in Aladdin’s Cave to me, but she knows every single item and woe betide anyone who tries to clear anything in the name of neatness and order. 

But in typical conniving genius/mother fashion I came up with a wizard scheme. 

“If you agree to help me clear your room and agree to get rid of anything you don’t play with,” said I, surreptitiously rubbing my hands together behind my back. “I will sell anything you don’t want on eBay and you can have the money! To buy anything you want!”

She eyed me suspiciously. 

“Anything?” she asked, wisely testing the boundaries of the agreement before signing on the dotted line. 

“Anything,” I confirmed. 

“Even toys? Like any toys I want?” 

“Yes,” I said benevolently. “Any toys you want.” 

“Yes please!” quoth she full of vim for the idea. 

Outwardly, I seemed like a benign ruler conferring favour on my subjects from the comfort of my crystal fairy throne. Inwardly, I cackled an evil witch cackle and danced around my cauldron of parental deceit. For I knew the tat that we were about to dispose of. We would be lucky to make £25. The deal was very much going to work in my favour.

Or so I thought.

Blessed with nothing but time and 100% buy in from an enthusiastic Small One we began. We decided to leave no stone unturned in the search for items which would add another 99p to our forthcoming eBay fortune. It took five whole days. We emptied every drawer. Went through every box. Paired every tiny barbie shoe, carefully weighed the relative value of every dog-eared bookmark and dealt ruthlessly with everything that had not been played with in the preceding year. 

We made a bin pile, a charity pile and a things-to-be-sold-on-eBay pile. The eBay pile soon became a precarious tottering cliff face and had to be decanted to the spare room bed. 

We moved the furniture and gave everything a scrub. I even hoovered under the bed. It was a very thorough job. We could see the floor. We could see her desk. We could find her hair brush. Everything seemed highlighted by beams of sunlight. Angels sang the Hallelujah Chorus as I put the hoover away. 

That night, Small One lay in bed with her blankets pulled up to her chin, starry eyes glistening with excitement. 

“And now for the best bit Mum! We’re going to make sooooo much money on eBay! I’ve made a Pinterest board for the all the toys I’m going to buy!” 

“Yes dear,” I said soothingly. “That’s right. Sooooooo much money,” while thinking in my head she would be lucky if she had enough for a game of Top Trumps. 

(And yes. She did make a Pinterest board for the all the toys she was choosing between. I couldn’t be prouder).

The following evening I spent several migraine-inducing hours photographing and posting all the lots we wanted to sell. It was, for the most part, a mountain of tat of the highest order. I remained quietly confident. 

I forgot all about it for several days and then Small One asked me how our auctions were going and I thought I’d take a look. I was somewhat surprised to note that we had bids totalling £30 already. Small One whooped with joy and scuttled off to check her Pinterest board to see what wonderful options this new-found wealth opened up. 

Over the next few days I continued to check progress nervously.  The total crept steadily upwards. I felt like emailing some of the bidders to make sure they really knew what they were doing. Small One began to weigh the pros and cons of various Pinterest options she had previously not dared to hope for. 

When the total edged close to £100 I began to panic. Small One’s buying potential had now reached the point where she would easily fill every precious square inch of space we had cleared with a whole new generation of tat. I decided to introduce a late-in-the-game rule adjustment. Part of the money could be spent on toys and part would need to be saved. Small One reluctantly agreed. As far as she was concerned it was a fairly safe bet since she was already able to buy everything on pages 700-705 of the Argos catalogue. 

In the end we made £150. She bought a series of Sylvanian sets that Santa had never quite stumped up for, and still had money left over to save for a Nintendo Switch. It could have been so much worse. Her room is still tidy and we remained on speaking terms throughout. 

The whole experience has definitely unlocked something within her though. She has taken to poking through my jewellery and other personal effects and muttering ominous pronouncements about what may or may not make a pretty penny when “You and Dad are unfortunately deaded.” It’s probably how Warren Buffet got started.

It has been a strange time, Spring 2020, not without its frustrations of course, but there have been positives too. Beloved has always been a gifted compilation compiler (a compilator if you will). He wooed me of old with carefully curated mix CDs with homemade covers, presenting me with these gifts of his esteem at every important juncture in our relationship; birthdays, Christmases, road trips, the time we went on an epic trip to Ikea on our honeymoon to buy furniture for our very first flat (it involved a borrowed van and trip to Scotland on the ferry at dawn. It was Northern Ireland 2005 – in those days we had to travel to another country to buy flatpack.)

Though his compilations are compilations no more, rather playlists, the urge and talent is the same. It seemed only right that we should have pandemic one. He duly chose appropriate tracks and entitled it with a flourish: ‘Lockdown Rockdown’. It provided some very welcome therapy in some fairly downbeat moments. We frequently found ourselves dancing round the kitchen to it on a quiet Thursday evening. Normal life is not normally so forgiving. There are usually precious few opportunities to prance around in your pyjamas with wild witch hair to Hall & Oates. 

There was a point when I was actually fully terrified of a return to the outside world. I had become cocooned in the safety and predictability of Magpie Hill. But as time has gone on it has begun to seem more normal to be out and about again. 

Soon I will hopefully get used to be able to being able to get a decent coffee and will be able to stop drinking 15 litres of latte a day to make up for lost time. Beloved has given up asking what is in the parcels that arrive every few days: the results of many an evening of online shopping. Maybe now being able to get into real shops will satisfy me and I won’t need to rely on the postman’s arrival for an endorphin spike. I’m not going to lie. The day TK Maxx reopened was pretty emotional.

Then before we knew it, just as spring had turned into summer, summer started to slip into autumn. Before Covid (BC?) the start of term always seemed carved in stone. So immovable as to not require consideration. This year, like everything else, we have not taken it for granted, but waited for weekly updates until it seemed that yes (as far as anyone could tell that afternoon) it was indeed happening. 

So now Small One’s new uniform is neatly hanging in her (still pretty tidy) wardrobe and her school shoes are polished. Magpie Primary’s Headmistress is starting to make tentative progress into recovery from her nervous breakdown after their term spent together and is ready to hand her over once again to the professionals. Though once again, she is definitely not crying, but is, I would imagine, simply allergic to something.

Yes. It’s September but not as we know it. 

Who knows what lies ahead? Maybe winter 2020 will be even weirder still. 

I doubt we’ll ever have as much time to perfect our dance moves or clean the oven again. 

But perhaps that’s for the best.