Well, I’m afraid I haven’t been getting on with my memoir challenge AT ALL – I still can’t quite bring myself to do it – read about real lives at the moment. I’m not sure what to do. Do I cancel the whole thing, delete the reviews I’ve done so far and forget all about it? Do I try again after a while, and read less than 50…? Maybe I will just adapt what I’ve done so far and go with the flow…It’s really no biggie, is it? I’ll just write what I want to write here and see how things go….
We’re Week Two into homeschooling and things are going ok so far. I have a year 10 and a year 8 child, both getting on with their work really well, and a year 13 daughter who is doing nothing at all, because A levels have been cancelled (we were so upset, but have accepted it now), and whose only current goal is to TIDY HER ROOM.
And a cat.
On the first day of Lockdown I had to venture out to the vets to take him to a pre-booked operation (doing the admin for it with the vet through the window as they weren’t letting people into the surgery, all felt very strange…). Since he’s come home, we’ve had all sorts of shenanigans…the cone was off after two hours, as Houdini managed to somehow, very quickly, shake the damn thing off in a couple of ninja head flicks (…mass panic ensued); he’s broken through a taped-up cat flap with a mirror propped against it, Andy from Shawshank Redemption-style; and he ran out of the house when I was dealing with a spider at the back door, to pitch black fields opposite our house, never to be seen again, we feared. Luckily, all stressy scenarios were quickly rectified – a cone re-tied, a cat flap re-fortified and a nonchalant cat returning ten minutes later to saunter past the back door without a care in the world, grabbed – and he is still safely behind bars (and cone) with us all.
He’s received a lot of love. Tablets hidden inside microwaved white fish. Attempts to put him on the litter tray and, when that failed, a large plant pot full of soil. He’s had his fur brushed and his tummy tickled and his ears scratched, because he can’t do it himself.
The cone is hopefully off tomorrow. He has been SO cross with us, having to have it on, we will all be enormously relieved!
Fiona Collins 