I have decided to be a lot more prolific during the isolation period (I've broken my first rule about blog posts - rule 1 NEVER START A POST WITH I). There's a lot to write about, and possibly a little more time to write than before. We're OK here, we live in a biggish house and the kids have a fair amount of space to move around. This is obviously very unlike the overwhelming number of people who don't have those kinds of privileges. We have decided to set up a routine for ourselves and the kids and the three other people that live on our property. If it helps you, I'll run through it
The kids are still at school. The school is making a massive attempt to ensure that the lessons are delivered to them from Google Classroom, this is all very well but they still need to be supervised. With both parents and our helper (affectionately known as the Magic Black Woman - I can't escape my massive Peter Green obsession) around to supervise, it's a little easier. But we all have to work too. The trick here is the routine
- The kids need to start school at 7 or 7:30. This means that they are dressed and have had breakfast and teeth brushed at that time. They will have an hour and a half of supervised school work. My working day will now start at 10 to accommodate this
- They then have an hour to play or run around or do some activity
- Classes resume at 11 until 12.
- Break for lunch
- They must then entertain themselves for an hour or so. As my wife says - they need to be bored and learn to be bored and figure out how to cope with this
- Half an hour to catch up on what they have done
- Then they are on their own
I think this routine is going to be more involved than this. We still don't know how to manage our own work schedules yet. But we are going to be rigid in this routine during the weekdays. Weekends will be different. If we don't find ourselves quarantined because we have picked up the virus then we'll take them to the park, go for rides on our bikes and throw balls around, without talking to anyone
The other thing that we feel very strongly about is supporting local businesses. There are a number of restaurants in our neighbourhood. Obviously money is not flowing. But we need to find ways to support them. I can see that we will need people to go shopping for us for small items. Hair still needs to be cut. Newspapers (other than iqbal's - we are proudly an iqbal-free newspaper house) need to be bought.
I'll keep on publishing our (hopefully) progress. Tempers are going to fray. It's a matter of looking beyond this isolation and coming out the other end with a modicum of sanity. What I do know is that the world will change substantially as a result of this virus. Ways of doing business will change. Already I have seen companies like DigiTV taking a lead in getting classes to people on the other end of an IP connection. I'll write more on this in the days to come
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