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The end is nigh

 Without wishing to make myself a hostage to fortune (and, as I write, cases are rising in part of the North West) but it's possible to detect a little optimism in the air. 

How much of this is natural sap rising as it always does at this time of year, how much is wishful thinking after the most exhausting year of most of our lives and how much is hard headed, genuine, vaccine-watching practicality it's impossible to say. But I've been wandering around whistling under my brerath a bit this week.

Part of it, of course, is the end being in sight of home learning (not home-schooling, that is when you take charge of your child's education entirely. We are merely conduits for the schools). Just one more week to go (three days for me, as Mrs Coastalblog does Monday and Tuesday while I'm off doing things to the pub, and I do Wednesday to Friday while she's off fighting fires at school).

There is a lot of garbage discourse surrounding home learning. A lot of shaming, a lot of performative parenting. We established pretty early on that, as there was no way it could possibly compare to classroom learning we weren't going to get too hung up on it. Do it, of course, particularly as the idiot Williamson has decreed that teachers are somehow supposed to assess pupils on the basis of what's sent in (the latest in a long, long line of blunders and wrong calls any one of which would, prior to this post-shame age, surely have lead to a well-deserved resignation), but not beat ourselves up about it. Just as well, really, for as lockdown 3 grinds on I think the cumulative toll of the last year is starting to show on a lot of people, children included.

Middle child spent yesterday on the sofa, curled up, asleep. He's not been sleeping well, I left him be. Sod the work. Sleeping your way through the rest of the pandemic strikes me as an eminently sensible way to wait it out. Because I think we've hit the stage where it's more important than ever before to take care of ourselves and check in on how we're feeling. With a possible end in sight, the brakes will start to come off, and all the stuff you've been holding onto for a year could unravel on you at once.

Chefs know all about this. We all get ill in January. Every year, without fail. You can't be ill in December, there's too much riding on a successful Christmas. So you don't get ill, you don't even feel ill. You get your head down and you work your way through the month and then in January, when it goes quiet, it hits you like a tonne of bricks. I normally take the first week in January off, knowing full well that I'll be no use for anything.

And so it is with this latest possible end. We've been let down before, we're not letting ourselves believe it yet. But as more things open up then people start to believe, and when you relax, that's when you realise that you've been hanging on by the skin of your teeth for the last six months.

It's the hope that gets you. Having actually listened to what scientists said, I didn't believe the government when they said there wouldn't be a second lockdown. I didn't believe them when they said Christmas would be fine. I laughed my head off when schools opened for a day and then closed (were I a teacher, I'd be fuming that anyone who had half an eye on Robert Peston's twitter feed knew that this was happening before I did. I remember picking the kids up from school: "see you tomorrow!" said the teacher "I highly doubt it", I replied), you could see all this coming a mile off (which makes it slightly more mystifying that the Government couldn't).

This time though...the weather's turned, the vaccine rollout has, credit where it's due, been a raging success (amazing what happens when you don't outsource these things to Serco) and maybe, just maybe, something approximating normality will return.

I'm not as optimistic as the Government are, even if this new, supposedly more serious Johnson is going slower than his more rabid backbenchers would like, cases are still, despite lockdown, high, and in some places rising. Add to this the tendency of a certain section of the population to interpret the slightest bit of good news as "everything is now completely fine once and for all" and it's not hard to envisage this new phase dragging on longer than expected.

But even so, even with my inbuilt mistrust and pessimism, it is difficult not to perceive green shoots. I'm writing menus and talking to suppliers again. We're running around making sure all the school uniform fits. Life is going on.

So it's all the more important that, with something resembling an end being nigh, you make sure you're alright. It's okay to have a bit of a breakdown. To not feel up to it, to spend a day sleeping on the sofa. To have a good cry. It's not long now. You did good.


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