On Wednesday I again spent part of my day keeping up with Twitter and other social media in an effort find the best recommended resources to share with students and staff at my school. I have been working my way through a document of online resources shared by a colleague in another school. School librarians as a profession are often quite isolated anyway in terms of much solo working being the norm. Of course you have colleagues in your school but you are often the only person doing your specific job. So sharing resources and ideas is the way we work commonly anyway, even when not in isolation. As well as the facebook groups I have already mentioned, I am also a member of the wonderful SLN group (School Librarians Network) which many of us find a lifeline for lone working. Each day I have been posting useful links for my Year 7 classes, whether that be a site to inspire story-writing or a free source of e-books. I am worried about over-whelming them with too much useful information though, as they are having remote lessons with all of their teachers.
Jess painted another door on the inside, this time the back door. The sunny yellow colour is truly cheery and complements well the deeper, sunflower yellow of the walls. Someone once said that our kitchen walls look just like the yellow of the van in the film ‘The Lady in the Van.’ Well I take that as high praise indeed! Here is our back door with a much needed facelift:
We decided to take our daily exercise as a family and venture over the road to the postbox! This is a half mile walk, with the postbox being outside our local church. Although I am a lapsed church-goer, we do have an attachment and connection to the church as sadly we have four family members buried there. You have to be quite special to have permission to be buried in our local churchyard, as it is the only church in the viccinity which actually has burial space attached to a functioning church. The first family member to be buried there was my brother, just over 41 years ago. He sang in the church choir and played the organ for some services. It is really peaceful and special walking round the gravestones, with views across open countryside. I also have happy memories of when the vicarage was the large house in the grounds (now a private house) and we would be invited there for church functions and after concerts.
We certainly appreciate having so much open space on our doorstep. On our return I decided to make a start on sowing some seeds. We are not going to be self-sufficient, but I always like to grow a few easy to manage herbs, salads and vegetables. This year I am hoping to grow cucumbers, courgettes, runner beans, rocket, basil, parsley, coriander and sunflowers. We bought a supply of seeds from our neigbouring nursery whilst it was still open. In the midst of sowing my seeds and cleaning out the cold frames, I felt obliged to give the drain a bit of a clean. It is on our neighbour’s side and it is not great for them when it gets a bit pungent! We also share the outside tap. We have to walk round to their side to use the tap; at times like these you appreciate having friendly, helpful neighbours, who don’t object when I wander round there to turn on the tap.
Today the winner of the Berkshire Book Award was announced. This is an award that my school is involved with, despite my school being in Oxfordshire. I am on the committee, so love to get my Year 7 and 8 students involved in reading and voting for the books. The winner this year is ‘Five Feet Apart.’ Yes, this title is indeed apt at the moment, but the significance of the distancing is because the two main characters are in hospital with cystic fibrosis. The film was released almost at the same time as the book, so as a family we have decided to have a film evening, as it is available on Netflix; luckily Jess has an account. We have plans for interesting TV snacks; photos to follow for Friday’s diary!
Thursday 26th March
A significant part of the day was spent helping our vulnerable friends and relatives; actually my mother and three family friends. I decided that Jess and I should brave Waitrose again. I put together our own list and gathered the other lists from the older generation. Of course on arriving at Waitrose we found that we had to queue in a spaced-out, social distancing way. Marshalls from the shop were on hand to explain the system and indicate when we could collect trolleys. I have to say that the Partners in Waitrose have been so helpful and understanding. Each time we have been shopping, I have explained that we are shopping for four households and that we need to take two trolleys; Jess and I can then do two households each. Whilst we were in the queue, probably for about 45 minutes, I tried to embarasss Jess by suggesting that we should sing to entertain the shoppers. My first two songs were ‘Always look on the Bright side of life’ and ‘It’s De-lovely’ (Cole Porter). However, she was not impressed so instead we played A-Z, with the theme of ‘activities to undertake in isolation.’ When Jess got bored with this, I played it instead online with my Chit-Chat friends on facebook. They all seemed to enjoy it!
Once we were finally allocated our time in Waitrose, the shop was lovely and peaceful, so social distancing was not too difficult. I had to grapple with using two scanners and Jess used just one. In terms of being limited by the number of items we could buy, quick check helps in the sense of separating out the shopping of different households. The shelves were so much better stocked than last time we visited, with fresh vegetables and fruit aplenty! Oh joy, we do love our vegetables! Also, meat and fish, as on our last visit, were not in short supply. The shopping did take quite a long time, with sometimes hunting for items that we do not usually buy. As it was getting to 2:30 by the time we had nearly finished and we had given our home-made loaf of bread to my mother, I decided that some bought sandwiches would be a bit of a treat for lunch in the garden later. I am not a fan of ready-meals and cannot remember the last time I bought any. However, I do have a weakness for shop sandwiches, even though they are never as good as home-made!
Paul calls me Pollyanna because I usually have a very optimistic view of life and every situation. Sometimes he finds it irritating! Why can’t you just get cross, instead of finding something positive about everything?! Well when I sent texts to Paul and to my mother saying that we would be out a long time, Paul’s reaction was very philosophical, whereas my mother thought we must have had a dreadful time! Not at all! You just have to ‘Always look on the bright side of life.’
Happily we were able to buy all the provisions we needed for our film night, so I am looking forward to that! Must remember to promote ‘Five Feet Apart’ to my Year 7 students and suggest that they too think about watching the film.
Onwards and upwards!