Saturday 28 March 2020

Lockdown and Homeschool.

Hey, how's everyone doing in day five of lockdown? What I don't get and what I just kept saying while watching the news was "why didn't they close things ages ago?" Schools were still open 8 days ago! and I couldn't really take things seriously when the schools were still open. I mean I wasn't like going around licking Grannies and stuff, but I did meet up with people and take Eric swimming in the last week of schools. It was last weekend I thought "time to take things seriously now the schools are shut."

Obviously we should all be careful and stay indoors and that means hopefully in 2 weeks time not a lot of people will be dying from this. But the people who are dying today got infected when schools were still open and people were still living almost normal lives, and I personally would blame the government for that. I don't know all the ins and outs and science and economics but it's not like we were the first country to get this and didn't really know what we were doing. However much hand washing and social distancing we're doing today it's not helping the people who got it a week or two ago.

My sister Sarah has had a crazy time recently as she was due to get married on 11th April. At first when this stuff came into the news she thought "ok maybe I have to limit the wedding to less than 100 people", then she thought she'd have a very small wedding in the church and a big celebration in a year, then even her small wedding was not possible because the banns of marriage were not published 3 times, and churches were shut. Then she planned an outdoor social distancing small family wedding which would not be legal, but managed to see this wedding wizard guy who did something magic so that the banns thing didn't matter anymore. Straight from there they went to the church in normal clothes, got legally married with 2 witnesses and went back to separate houses. In her head the "real" wedding was going to be in the garden today where she would wear her dress and we would sing some songs and play some games at a safe distance. Then we went into lockdown and this was no longer possible. I suggested we all planned our weekly shop at the same time and that she walked down a different kind of aisle in her dress, but she didn't go for it.

Homeschooling has been quite fun at times, I'm sure the novelty will wear off. I feel like Eric is getting a bad deal. He normally gets me to himself in the day, but now a lot of focus has been on Percy's learning. We have a timetable which starts with yoga at 9AM. I love this kids yoga, Cosmic Kids yoga on YouTube. It's basically putting your kids in front of YouTube guilt free, Percy loves it. Eric joins in sporadically. At 10am I've been doing live craft which has been really fun. I like the interaction of it being live, but it is a little stressful when Eric is kicking off and having to make the crafts at a few different stages is effort. Yesterdays was super fun though.
Day 1 weaving
Day 2 Treasure maps


Day 3 Magazine holder

Day 4 Turtles

Day 5 Giant board game.


If you want to follow the crafts like my page.

It 11AM Percy does half an hour of reading while Eric has half an hour of 1-on-1 time with either me or Dan. Percy's reading is painfully slow. 12 is lunch and exercise time.



Then we have a bit of time for school worksheets. The teacher also sends work, yesterday was make a butterfly and we smashed it.

This school time is great if Eric naps, which is not what normally happens. Today we drove to a park (now banned I think) and we drove a bit extra to get Eric to sleep, which meant I could teach Percy properly. I quite enjoyed today's lesson where I taught him about money, how to recognise the coins, what £2 could actually buy you. He loved it, and it was a nice feeling to be like "I actually taught you something you didn't know today." It makes me think I should do more stuff like this in school time.


The kids watch TV at 3 and have daddy time after that. The first the plan was for him to teach music and French, but I think this was a bit ambitious at the end of the day.

Today I was feeling pretty positive, I like change, I've video chatted this week with people I haven't talked to for ages.
Extended family chat
I even played Monopoly with our friends Jess and Martin. It works well if you have two boards and when you owe money you put it in the bank and they take it out of their bank.

It's nice to have a break from doing so much comedy, it's nice to have lunch as a family, and now that they've announce the self employed thing I should be fine for money. But then I watched the news...
People are dying everywhere, but the thing that made me really sad was seeing a massive refugee camp of Syrians who don't have running water. So far no one there has it, but it's only really a matter of time before someone gets it, and then everyone will get it and anyone who would go to hospital here, and have the chance of getting better, will just die.
I don't know what I can do about that other than pray, but there's ways I can help people here. There's friends I can check up on, and I'm helping with a Food Bank. I hope my art is fun for parents out of ideas. I really hope I can be generous, and kind with what I have.

Stay safe x

Wednesday 18 March 2020

The Lucky Ones

Since I last blogged the world has gone mental. My last blog was about a guy saying I was shit at a comedy gig. Now I long for the opportunity to go out and be called shit. It's so crazy that less than 3 weeks ago I was at my sisters hen do, we were happily playing the classic toilet roll wedding game, we didn't even save the used bits of toilet roll. We all left saying "see you in 6 weeks". Now it's looking like the wedding might be just immediate family, I might be the only bridesmaid. The Hen do will certainly be a bigger gathering than the wedding. My other sister is a doctor who specialises in infectious diseases so this must be like Christmas for her!



But we are the lucky ones. I always think it's funny when people say "oh you were lucky" on days when you've had a car crash and only got minor injuries. People said that to me when I dislocated my elbow just before my GCSEs, I was "lucky" because it was my left arm. But what about all the days that nothing bad happened! You don't go calling people lucky then. But I guess I feel like of all the times in our lives this could have happened this is actually a good time for us. Dan is able to work from home, I will loose some work, I had some paid comedy gigs coming up and some schools work in June but hopefully it will just be pushed back. The kids are at an ok age, they're not worried, they're not in the middle of exams, Eric is just about old enough for me to explain things to him. Our house is big enough and we have a garden. They will still drive me mental though!

But imagine if this happened while we were in our old tiny house with a little yard, or when we were homeless, living with another family. We're also all healthy so we don't need to worry too much about us getting it, and our parents are young enough to not be at risk either. We are a best case scenario family, and I hope we will be able to use this privilege to help others.

We know old people who can't take any risks and will be completely isolating for months, I know a lot of comedians who don't have another job and have paid out for Edinburgh and stuff, I know a couple who are both self employed, I know a single mum on a zero hours contact. What will homeless people do?

 We've got a old neighbour called Geoff, he's such a legend. Once when I got trapped in my porch with both kids I had to climb out of the window and run and get help, Geoff was the first person I saw, he's always out walking his 2 dogs. I got him to come back to mine, I climbed back into the window and then passed the boys out of the window to him. Eric was only a baby at the time and cried, but we managed. I saw him in the street yesterday and he was saying how if he has to self isolate he won't be able to go out and top up his gas card because he's on a pre-paid meter. I told him to leave his number with us and we'll look after him. He doesn't have much family and isn't on the internet. Today he called round with his number and gave us 2 toilet rolls!  he said "your kids.... when I see them my heart shines, and when they go in your house it's like the sun goes in."

We have a lot to be thankful for, so I feel like we're able to be positive about this time. We don't actually spend much time as a 4 so I think this could be nice, when you are limited in what things you can go out and do it does make you be creative with what you have. I hope to practise my banjolele more, maybe write some new comedy, get back into art, I'm thinking textile stuff (batik and machine embroidery is something I want to do more of). Dan has already been making a podcast which hasn't been released yet, but this might be the ideal time. I'm going to finally start Eric's baby book, I spent hours doing Percy's one but Eric's isn't even started.

This is a weird week where everyone has been told not to go out, but the schools are still on for now. As a massive extrovert I'm trying to get out and see people while I still can. Yesterday we did some chalk painting after school.






I've decided to do a Facebook live craft a day for kids, everyday at 10am starting on 23rd March from my Hannah the artist page. I'd love people to interact and post photos of what stuff they've made.
Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/artisthannahjones/

The internet does make this time in history better. I'm normally a bit down on the internet but it's great to see people asking for or offering help, sharing photos and videos of funny stuff they're getting up to.

A nice thing about being a parent in times like this is that kids are so in the moment, they don't get the seriousness of the situation, they're not talking about it all the time like adults are. I had to begin the day yesterday by singing happy birthday to one of Percy's teddies. He also said before bed "mummy I love you from the ground to space, Daddy I love you from the ground to the top of a giraffe." He is unaware of what a burn that is to Daddy because he's really saying Mummy I love you 20,000 more time than Daddy. (based on space being 100km away and a giraffe being 5 meters high)

Stay strong friends!
Big up the NHS workers
Big up the supermarket workers, thanks for staying calm in the chaos.
Parents - you can do this!
People who are struggling financially, emotionally, or health wise have a virtual hug from me, lets all look out for each other. x