TIT

This morning, a lot of children will be going back to school. It won’t be the same but it will be fine. It’s always scary to do something new but everyone finds a way. I’m not going to write anymore about that but I wanted to start with it.

I also realised that I haven’t said anything about the death of George Floyd, or the way the police in America are treating people who are justifiably upset about it. I should have mentioned it. It’s a terrible thing.

I’m sorry that all of these worries aren’t holding my blog’s attention right now.  Even last night’s corona briefing took me back to my current obsession.
Have you noticed that they’ve stopped calling it Test Track and Trace? I suspect that it may be because it is too difficult to say when drunk and the scientists need something get them through this. Jenny Harries was the latest to send weird messages last night. She said that a playground wasn’t a place you’d want to be because children are snotty and can’t socially distance just as teachers were preparing to go back to school. I can't help but be impressed at her ability to undermine their confidence. But it was the fact that they seemed to have started to call this new phase Test Isolate Trace that caught my attention. This is the TIT phase.

I’m assuming that if it all goes wrong and there is a second spike it’s so they can blame us for being tits and ripping the pants out of it. Or it might all be Philip's fault (if we can ever work out who Philip is)

In our house we are firmly in the tit phase. The bluebirds are beginning to fledge and we can’t stop watching them.. They are fluffy and unsure. The Long Suffering Husband called me into the garden to watch one of the fledglings fly away.
“Our babies have left home,” I said, wistfully.
“Yes, but they come back,” he replied a little too quickly, glancing towards the house.

Maybe the LSH is ready for lockdown to end sooner than I am.

My own little family is fairly fluffy and unsure about the end of lockdown. When my son mentioned meeting his friends for a socially distanced picnic and I said, “Why not? If Dominic Cummings can drive to Durham..” He gave me a lecture on two wrongs not making a right, social responsibility and the statistics of exponential growth. My daughter, having spend the last 12 weeks, publishing articles about rules and having to be forensically clear about what is allowed and what is not, has become quite fearful. I’m similar for different reasons. Social anxiety was so much easier to manage when you weren’t allowed to see anyone. Yesterday, I dropped a birthday present to a friend. I could hear laughter from the garden and see balloons over the top of the fence. I could feel a ball in my chest and the familiar heat rising up to my hole-filled brain. I popped the present on the doorstep , pretended to ring the bell and ran away, preferring to send a text saying, “Didn’t want to interrupt the party - check doorstep,”  but only when I was far enough away not to be seen.

“Gosh,” I thought to myself, “I am a tit and I’m really not ready to fledge.”