I think, therefore I'm right!

Sunday, 7^th June 2020

Do you remember when you were halfway through writing a novel about some made-up people in a made-up place doing made-up things, written for an imaginary readership of people who existed in a time somewhere in the future? And then the whole world was shifted on its axis and writing about imaginary people doing imaginary things was somehow dwarfed by the very real but invisible monster pounding across the land.

So here I am, stuck between the past, where I had plans and dreams, and the future, where no plans can be made and dreams wither on the vine. I imagine this is the same for lots of people. What is there to mark the days without the celebrations, large and small, that dot the calendar? What is there to look forward to? How do we distinguish the days, one from another, when time is not pockmarked with events, moments that we refer back to in our memories, special times?

As an old git, my calendar was pretty empty. We had booked no holiday because we knew we were going to get a puppy. For the same reason, we had avoided making plans for the summer.

But my eldest son is 18 in a month’s time and he is watching anxiously for the date when pubs might reopen. Sitting in the park or on the beach with a group of friends could be his birthday ‘event’ this year but then, this is also the birthday that an eight year old could celebrate. What is there to mark the transition into adulthood if it is not necking ten pints of over-priced lager, bundling your way into a club to bounce about in the darkness and then sitting on Brighton beach to watch the sun come up over the pier?

It is the young that have the most to lose in this pandemic and at a time when they should be tearing the world apart with youthful rebellion. As they expected to soar into bright unknowable futures, their future curve is being flattened.

Personally, I can do ‘no plans’ with a shrug of the shoulders. At some point, I will shrug off the heavy virus blanket and start work on the novel again. The future will seem not just possible but probable. Imaginary people doing imaginary things in imaginary places is also our futures, after all.

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Anyway, loyal blog readers amongst you may have noticed that I have taken aim at tabloid newspapers (and this includes the Daily Mail) and their reporting during these strange times. This was not my original aim. A few years back, I came across the term ‘confirmation bias’ which posits the idea that once we have formed opinions on certain key subjects – gender, say, or immigration, or Brexit – we then seek out confirmation of these opinions in print and social media to bolster our views and thus give us that smug self-assurance that allows us to hear our own voices amplified and echoed back to us.

In a bid to seek balance, I have, in the course of writing this blog headed across the political spectrum, away from my anarchist left sensibilities, across the Daily Mail and Sun centre-right positions and I have even (with trepidation) spent time on far-right websites such as the neo-fascist, US-based Proud Boys organisation to see what a world-wide pandemic look like through a prism of hate (surprisingly dull was the answer probably because the virus was too big to be shrunk into their world view). In an ideal world, seeking out the political opinions and views of those with diametric views to my own would lead to me being able to dispassionately debate a topical controversy, weighing up the arguments of each side before trying to come to a consensus.

Sadly, this has not happened. Reading the Daily Mail’s toxic word-filth just makes me angry and entrenched. Peering into arch-Republican Lieutenant Dan Patrick’s voting record just made me angry and entrenched. Watching the succession of Tory cabinet members excusing Cummings’ adventures in the north just made me angry, righteously angry.

But ‘righteously’ angry? Who do I think I am…Jesus?

It’s when literally everyone believes ardently that they are right, that wars are started. Or pandemics rip like wildfire through a nation. We can’t all be correct and opinions are simply that: ideas subjectively filtered through the bias of your mind to be spat out like fact-missiles – ‘Listen up, motherfucker!’

Hardly anyone wants to admit they’re wrong; even less people want to admit they don’t know. And nobody at all wants to find out they’re ludicrous. So, poor poor Dominic Cummings. Non-card carrying, unaffiliated ‘outsider’ (yeah, right!) come to smash the status quo with his data hammer and snappy slogans: Get Brexit done! Take back control! Hit the north! See a castle! If from now until his demise, he is unable to appear in public without being ridiculed then I will know that the universe is still swirling with karma. When your political mindset is that the public are stupid plebs, easily manipulated, and just waiting to be herded into the ready-made slogan pens, then karma decrees that you will be stamped into the people’s consciousness as a lying fool, worthy of contempt, and herded into a pen marked ‘FOOL.’

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In the unlikely event of you noting my absence from the blog-writing, then this is because I am now working full-time back in school again. It is not school as I know it. About 30% of our staff team can’t come into school due to being in the ‘vulnerable’ category or living with someone who is. Practically, that means we couldn’t actually bring back all the year groups before the summer holidays. For this last week, though, we were welcoming back Year 6 with Year 1 returning the week after that. This meant that on Monday, there were no children in school as the classrooms we needed had to be stripped down and re-arranged. Anything soft was removed and anything that would usually be shared, including such staples as books. Down in Early Years, nearly everything was taken out and the tables arranged very formally. Quite simply, it all looked a bit sad, like we’d been taking all the fun and colour away. All that was left were tables and chairs and individual packs of essentials (pen, pencil, ruler, rubber etc) on each table.

The school is also covered in signs, inside and out, mostly warnings. ‘DO NOT enter this area: it has been deep cleaned,’ reads the sign taped across the double doors at the bottom of the stairs that lead to my classroom. There are several things up there that I would like to use but cannot get. There are sings everywhere advising the children to stay 2m apart. There is tape and spray-painted footsteps marking the children’s way in to school, very like what you will have seen outside the supermarkets.

When the children arrive in the morning, they are ‘processed’ into the school like tins of beans on a conveyor belt. I sit at a table and they step into my zone, either alone or with their siblings, to be registered. Then they are sent to stand with their teaching staff until they have all arrived and are led to their bleak-looking classrooms. This strict regimen is alien to all of us but it is part of the new abnormal.

I have been allocated the older KS2 keyworker/SEN/at risk children. They have been in school throughout lockdown but the arrival of more children in school this week means they now have to be allocated a zone in the school grounds for their break times and separate play equipment and even stricter rules than before. Essentially, for pupils and staff, we are not to mix together and must remain in our ‘bubbles.’

Although PPE is available to staff if we want it, only one teacher is currently wearing gloves all day. Personally, I don’t feel I can teach in gloves and a mask so will take my chances. Hand-washing is strictly policed, however children being children means scissors are left on other children’s tables and accidentally swapped, I keep picking up a child’s ruler to use when I am helping them before I remember I shouldn’t and despite trying to support individual pupils by sitting next to and slightly behind them, they always turn to you to make eye contact and then you find you are face to face and about 1.7m closer than the 2m distance you should be apart.

It is nice to only have a maximum of 12 children in my group but they are a very disparate mix of ages and abilities and emotional needs. In the classroom, many of them would have a one to one support but instead there is me and a teaching assistant. They have a laptop each to do their home learning but once you take your eyes off them, many of them will find a free website for online games or start trying to hack the online learning website we use (surprisingly easy) to insert silly or inappropriate names and headers: Yeet; Daniel is poo; King of Fortnite. Unfortunately, they cannot keep such misdemeanours to themselves and by calling over to their friend, they alert me to their mischief.

On Tuesday morning, before the children arrive, my headteacher tells me that two different sets of neighbours complained directly to West Sussex County Council about how we weren’t keeping the children 2m separate from each other on the playground. I think back to before half term when I was last in school and chasing them round the treehouse or being hauled into ‘jail’ by a gang of a dozen kids, all pulling on my clothes and baying boisterously. Ooops!

Anyway, we walk the children out onto the playing field in a strict line, all separated by 2m, but then, the minute we are in our allocated zone, they all start chasing each other or gathering to chat in small groups and this is fine. The advice is that outside they are not expected to be 2m apart but no doubt the neighbours, who we can see peeking over their garden wall or pretending to do a bit of gardening but actually staring at our kids, will complain again. Personally, I can’t think of a game that children can play 2m apart that doesn’t involve passing a ball or other piece of equipment between them.

I see no need to take sides over whether a parent should send their children in or not. As the children in our school are doing the work set online just as those at home are doing, the benefits of school are social as much as anything. I think, looking at the comments left by my class on our school portal, that what they are missing about school is each other (and even me, according to some messages). Children are highly social creatures; school is where we learn to navigate the world of humans, the subtle and not-so-subtle interactions that happen when we gather together. What is lost during lockdown is exactly that: the joy of being together, with a dear friend or a thousand strangers in a music festival crowd.

 

Latest data for the UK (as of 12pm):

Infected: 284,868

Deaths: 40,465

Celebrity deaths: One ‘Goodie,’ some musicians I’ve never heard of and some bit-part actors. Still no influencers or people we love to hate.

People I know who are infected: 0

Song of the Day: ‘Invisible People’ – Chicano Batman