Kate Winslet standing on the edge of the Titanic

 I woke up grumpy.  I'm just in a bad mood. Like most people I'm tired.  Mentally exhausted.  We are all totally flumpsaustedshagbugknackerfucked.  Lockdown 3 is actually the worst version of Lockdown they've invented so far and really if they wanted a version that might just push the whole country over the edge to the point where they too are donning viking horns and fur gilets to storm parliament then this just might be it.

There is nothing like owning your bad mood, though, for improving it.  I told the people in my house.  The Long Suffering Husband considered trying to fix it, took one look at my face and stepped back, saying, "Well I'm here if you need me."  My daughter raised an eyebrow and said, "OK."  The dog farted. 

"I just need to get up and do my yoga and write my blog.  Then it will be fine," I told them.

The dog farted again.  

I put the yoga on. Today, it was a routine that focused on neck and shoulder tension.  It was almost as if she knew.  

"Imagine you are Kate Winslet standing on the edge of the Titanic," she said as I was standing with my arms out and my heart radiating towards the sky.

"I don't have to imagine," I shouted.

That's what lockdown 3 feels like.  Not the euphoria of young love and freedom.  Not the sensation of flying but the knowledge that we are heading for an iceberg and most of us won't make it.  Knowing that some people are going to push onto the lifeboat first.  Listening to the string quartet play, despite knowing their jobs/lives are over.  

Lockdown 2 was my favourite.  This was the one where we all tried to work as normal but didn't have a social life.  Obviously, if your work was in the entertainment industry then you couldn't work but most of us did.  

Lockdown 1 was a shock but it had the bonus of there being no expectation.  It was a hold your breath, wait and see lockdown.  We thought we could trust our leaders to get us out of this if we all did the right things.  

Lockdown 3, however is of the magnitude of number 1 but with the added complication that expectations have changed.  Government, instead of fixing the problem, just said that they would prosecute anyone who didn't manage to do everything.

Gavin Williamson turned down BT's offer to provide cheap broadband for poorer families and cut the number of devices that could be delivered to schools.  He told schools that they had to be open but not open.  He confirmed that all nurseries had to be open, requiring more school children to need to go to school (because mothers work in nurseries so that they can still care for their children outside the school hours).  Then, yesterday, he stood up in parliament and reminded parents that he had made it a legal requirement for schools to provide 3-5 hours of remote learning a day and that if they weren't getting it then they should report their school to Ofsted.  

I know that all schools aren't the same but no school wants to feel that one disgruntled parent could cause them to be prosecuted.  A call has gone out on social media for parents to tell Ofsted of all the good things schools are doing, so that there is at least an accurate representation of the situation.  

Luckily, I work in an excellent school (and by that I mean actually excellent and not 'excellent' as in an Ofsted rating) and so I know that parents are being supported to the best of the school's ability to deliver those hours of learning a day.  However, this is exhausting for the staff.  Teachers are in school.  They are planning lessons that can be done in school or at home, they are making videos of lessons, they are replying to emails, they are calling parents and they are learning how to work a whole host of new technology.  

The BBC have rolled out their teaching programmes on CBBC, which took them since March last year to make but teachers are expected to make theirs overnight and parents are meant to use whatever app the school uses with no training. ICT training over the phone is very tricky.  Even if schools are doing live, Zoom/teams type lessons it's still exhausting. The effort the brain has to put in to process these interactions where you don't have all the normal cues seems to be so much greater.   

No teacher signed up to be a children's TV presenter and producer.  No parent signed up to be a teacher, whilst still trying to hold down their normal job.  No student nurse signed up to work 24 hours a day without being paid. Absolutely no one wants all of this and I worry what kind of state people will be in when, or indeed, if, we get back to normal.

Oh dear.  I'm sorry.  I clearly am in a bad mood.  But I'm owning it.  It's the weekend tomorrow.  Book reading. Tree pruning. Long walks and no screens.