Dory the Nursery Rhyme Explorer

 My brain is a bit holey at the moment. Things don’t seem to want to stay in it and I have become the living human version of Dory, the fish from finding Nemo. This is something that seems to happen to me when I have a lot to think about. It’s like my head can’t hold everything in and so I forget random things that it thinks aren’t important. This is a normal human thing and I very much suspect that I’m not the only one this is happening to because there is a lot to think about. 

I should take this moment to say that I was wrong when I suggested that Essex Council’s incentive for wanting to go into tier 2 was financial. It was because they are scared of it running out of control. The director of public health wants to be the guy that takes action early; the hero in the disaster movie. He has seen hospital admissions in the area go from 0 - 60 in two weeks and cases rise quickly. He has crunched the numbers and decided that we are doomed. It is true that we are beginning to get back to a level where we know people who have it. I understand the fear but am equally aware of the terror that people have of being asked to go against human nature and stop being sociable. I mull over the mixed messages and confusions constantly. It stops me sleeping (most things do) and causes things like children’s names to fall out of my head. I wonder how we can get control of the virus by not seeing our friends but continuing to have our eyebrows done by strangers. It puzzles me that there is an idea of a COVID secure restaurant. It terrifies me that people who get sick are blamed, as though it’s somehow their fault that they didn’t see an invisible virus coming. It concerns me that when it comes to coronavirus there’s suddenly no such thing as medical confidentiality and rumour and gossip are encouraged anytime someone is sick. 

These are the reasons I think I’ve been a bit Dory, now that I’ve got up and thought about it properly. Yesterday, however, I was convinced that it was all because my swimming goggles were too tight. 

I was working with the reception class on Nursery Rhymes. They were telling me their favourites and I was trying to sing them. This is usually quite easy because Nursery Rhymes have fallen out of fashion. Most years we are lucky if we get much more that Twinkle Twinkle and the Wheels on the Bus. This year, however, lockdown has caused the return of the nursery rhyme. Kids stuck in the house with their parents have sung everything from Humpty Dumpty to Little Miss Muffet to Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. If the research about nursery rhymes and reading is to be believed then lockdown will have improved the literacy skills of this generation of kids. 

“There’s a second verse to that,” I said, confidently, “The cows are in the meadow, eating buttercups.....”

I’d forgotten the rest.

“Aishoo?” my colleague prompted, “You are being a bit Dory today.”

The phrase, “I’m Dory the Nursery Rhyme Explorer,” popped into my head but I knew not to say it. Instead I said, “I know, I think it’s because my swimming goggles are too tight. My brain has been squished.”

I didn’t make myself sound anymore sane. It’s normal to forget things because you have a lot on your mind. I don’t need to make up excuses about my swimming goggles, although I really must sort them out because they have made my left eye quite sore.