APRIL 2020

We began the month with a service to our gas heating unit. Didn’t want that breaking down in mid winter. After the man had left, I sprayed Glen 20 all around, whilst wondering if I was being paranoid.

We were now living under Lockdown. Bit of a novelty at first, but destined to become a boring way of life. Only two people were allowed to gather together outside, unless they were members of the same household. There were only four permitted reasons to leave home: for food and essential items; to exercise; for medical reasons; to go to work or education – if either were happening.

It was announced that schools in the State would move to remote learning after the Term 1 holidays ended. I wondered how that was going to work, both for the boy in Grade 3, and for the one in Year 11, especially as he was also doing a Tafe course that required outings and practical work?

Easter came and went. Quietly, for the most part. There were plenty of news stories of people being fined for “illegal gatherings”: parties, groups in parks and the like. We heard a few anecdotes about visitors from Melbourne being encountered in Bendigo, so it would seem that there were some people who were determined to have an Easter getaway.

I stopped the procrastinating that had been going on for a couple of years, and tackled both the new sewing machine, bought before we left Melbourne as a quilting only machine, and the rather mysterious and scary world of machine quilting. The hand-sewn top for said quilt had been long completed, the material for backing long obtained – it just needed me. Whilst not as hard as feared, the process was still tense for me. I stuck to straight lines – more fancy might be for another time and another quilt. Made some mistakes – but think that, mostly, you would have to know they were there, to see them. I was actually quite pleased with this first effort.

My second-ever quilt; first machine quilted one.

We obtained our annual flu shots. Interesting process: at the appointed time, had to phone the medical centre, then pull into the car park, whereupon doctor came out, all masked up, and administered the injections through open windows. We then had to sit waiting in the carpark for 10 minutes before driving away.

By now, it was being officially recommended that masks be worn when out of the home.

Daughter’s father-in-law died. He had been ill with cancer for a while and in hospice care for some weeks. So it was expected, but unfortunate that it happened on daughter’s birthday! His funeral was affected by the restrictions on numbers of people gathering together. Sad, because in normal times it would have been a large gathering .

In Melbourne, the fiberglass work on Bus had been finished, but mechanic had been slow to collect it from the factory to take it back to his workshop to install the door.

With the commencement of Term 2, we commenced home schooling the 8 year old, who had been in a composite Grade 3/4  group at school, it being one that seemed to have a policy of all composite classes, a policy which the former school principal in the house did not agree with! Kid’s mothers both still had to work in “essential” jobs. He was dropped here at 7.45 in the mornings – meaning this little black duck had to get up unusually early every day. The other half slumbered on until his usual mid-morning. I gave kid breakfast, before we got to education.

The little-used lounge room was set up for schooling, with table and chairs. The boy’s school provided – eventually – printed work materials (which were collected once a week from the school, and returned ditto, where required). There was an hour of face to face, online, “schooling” every morning, via (mother’s) laptop. I wondered what happened for those without access to such a device.

The hour of online schooling was tedious and boring, both for kid and me. At least a  quarter of it was used up by a type of roll call. The young teacher seemed to be floundering. “Awesome” was the most used word in her vocabulary – and it was gratingly overused. It occurred to me that, if she was like this in the real classroom, home schooling might be a benefit for kid.

I had prepared with an online order of some workbooks – handwriting, maths, spelling. As time went on, added to these with some excellent NSW curriculum based materials on reading and comprehension, history and geography. Seemed that Victoria no longer taught these latter disciplines as such, but rather a vague sort of “humanities” – which certainly didn’t feature in what the school was requiring be done in lockdown. That was restricted to Maths, some pretty simple reading and writing. It was glaringly obvious that the skill of handwriting anything had not been a feature of kid’s classroom. As a left-hander, he was even more in need of same. We started with really basic skills – like correctly holding pencil, how to position paper…What had that school been doing for the last three-plus years?

School work sessions were broken up with a long dog walk every afternoon  – a grandad task. He also did some games with the boy – catching practice against the brick wall of the garage and the like. Most afternoons there was some outside work with grandad – gardening, learning to use tools and the like. Tade off for grandad was the sort of hot lunches he never normally received – toasted sandwiches, pies, dim sims, French toast. Kid was a very selective eater: if it featured vegetable or fruit matter, or needed much chewing, forget it. He watched me consume my healthy salad lunches with horrified incomprehension.

The boy was collected again about 4.30pm.

Thus were our days structured.

I had taken to sending a shopping list to daughter, who would bring my weekly supplies after doing her weekend shopping.

At least, all the restrictions were good for the environment – less driving and flying meant less air pollution.