The show must go on

I work at a theatre and last Monday evening, as a result of out Prime Minister's announcement, we found out that the show would not go on, for a long time. 

I said goodbye to my friend that night - maybe we would see each other the next day in the office, or maybe it would be weeks and weeks.

The whole world is in the grip of a terrible thing. All we can do, is take the advice our government and medics give us, and try to adapt our lives to this new world of encroaching fear.

'The show must go on' has taken on a new meaning. We must go on, living our lives as well as we can, caring for our children, doing what work is available and trying as much as possible to do the things we used to do, without going outside our front doors.

Photo by Dillyboase via Wikimedia Creative Commons

Staying home

Working at home used to be a once a week luxury - I'd fire up the coffee machine, listen to Popmaster and blitz through the most difficult tasks in my working week without any distractions. But I'm a social animal, and I need to get out and about. It's going to be hard to adjust to not going out every day.

When the announcement came that the schools were closing, it felt like the bottom had fallen out of my world (again). Education is my daughter's right, and I value it. She complains about going in every single day, but she comes out bright, happy and having learned something wonderful. Watching her learn to read and write under the guidance of her lovely teacher at the tiny village school has been an amazing privilege. And now we don't have that.

Plenty of people choose to home educate their kids and there are lots of advantages, and many children blossom with the individual attention and flexible learning approaches that parents can provide where teachers can't. But what they don't generally do is home educate their kids whilst completing near full-time hours of work.

The next few weeks

When this started to happen I imagined I would have a lot of time on my hands. But at this point it looks like the opposite - work is busier than usual as the theatres fight back to show that the arts are still here, that we can entertain, educate, distract, and make sure we are still here for the future.

This next few weeks our society will divide into people who don't have enough to do, who are isolated and lonely; and those who have too much to do, whether because they are combining childcare and work, or because they're on the front line, doing the essential tasks that will keep our society running.

A lot of people are going to be very stressed. And while I know I'm lucky to be in the best camp for me (busy), and I'm grateful for that, it makes me unbelievably sad that as an only child my lovely little girl may not see another child for weeks and weeks.

Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you all about my panic buying...