In the grip of the apocalypse, homeschooling is frightening

I’ll be straight with you: this isn’t how I thought the apocalypse was going to pan out. Growing up watching dystopian sci-fi movies, I was led to believe that, following the breakdown of civilisation as we know it, we’d all be joining berserker motorbike gangs, accessorising with human bones and having gladiatorial fights to the death in the Thunderdome. Not sitting on the sofa watching Netflix and grumbling because we can’t get an Ocado delivery slot.

At least, that’s what it’s like for the majority of us who are stuck at home – belatedly grounded by the Prime Minister, after he decided that Dom Cummings’ original plan (let loads of pensioners die so useful, tax-paying citizens can develop a herd immunity) wasn’t a great look, politically.

Amazingly, it turns out my job of watching TV and writing down what happens, helping celebrities promote their latest consumer products and taking “a sideways look at life” in the local paper doesn’t qualify me as a key worker. Bloody cheek. Bucks Fizz aren’t going to interview themselves, you know.

The upshot of which is we’re not allowed to send the kids to school, and are instead having to educate them at home, on top of my vital frontline TV-watching duties. The struggle is real, people.

Anyway, what I’ve learned from home schooling so far is that a) teachers should be paid six million pounds a week and b) school IT technicians should be paid double that.

Seriously, as if trying to get your head around algebra (it’s maths, but with letters. I know!) isn’t hard enough, we’re also having to navigate our way through a byzantine maze of online educational tools, platforms and file directories that even Alan Turing would probably find “a bit fiddly”.

In one morning alone, we logged into EduLink, Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint, Seneca, MyMaths, YourMaths, HisMaths, SumDog, SlumDog, SnoopDogg, DoodleLearn, DoodleWrite, DoodleLooksLikeALady … at which point I discovered it was all academic – or not academic, as it turned out – ’cos none of this stuff works on my son’s Google Chromebook anyway. (Pro tip: If you’re thinking of buying a Google Chromebook, don’t buy a Google Chromebook. As a home schooling tool, it’s slightly less useful than a child’s drawing of a laptop on a cereal box.)

I phoned up my friend Dave, whose day job is designing and installing school IT systems. After about five minutes of investigating the problem, he went a bit quiet, then said he had an urgent meeting. I video-called another mate who works in IT. He was equally baffled, but at least it was nice to see a friendly face, and a bit of someone else’s kitchen.

Then a nice lady in the school parents’ Facebook group invited me round to try to fix the problem.

Well, I say “round” – I crouched on her doorstep balancing a laptop on my knee, while peering myopically at her screen from an acceptable social distance.

After about 30 minutes, she diagnosed the problem as Chromebook being rubbish, but recommended installing the programmes on my MacBook instead.

So I went home and did that, except it wouldn’t let me install anything until I’d downloaded the latest operating software, which took about three hours, and then, when I tried to log back into my Google account to get my emails, it just kept telling me that my Google account already existed, which I already knew, because if it didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be trying to log into it.

Suddenly, it felt less like an IT problem than a philosophical one. Cancel Alan Turing and get me Albert Camus on the Existential

Helpdesk.

Anyway, by 1am, I’d finally managed to sort it all out, having achieved a sum total of no school work and no work work over the course of 16 hours. Thankfully, since then, everything has settled down from being impossible, to merely very, very difficult, which I guess is progress of sorts.

(Don’t tell anyone this, but

I’ve been sending the odd in-app question to my son’s teachers, as if they’re from him. I know a 48-year-old man pretending to be an 11-year-old boy in a chat room is generally frowned upon in normal times, but these aren’t normal times. And I promise I want nothing more sinister than some direction on the Year 7 geography curriculum.)

The good news is that my other son is still at junior school, where life is much more simple. There, the homework basically consists of looking at a flower, drawing a ladybird and then running around the coffee table for 10 minutes.

Or you can do Joe Wicks’ online morning workout, but we’ve given that a wide berth so far, as it’s hard enough trying to keep your spirits up without having some ripped gym bunny in your face, making you feel even more pale, doughy and unfit than you already are. (I did manage three laps of the coffee table, though. In your face, Ant Middleton.)

Throughout, I remain acutely aware that I’m one of the lucky ones in all this. So far, my family is fit and healthy, and Mrs K and I both still have jobs that, for now at least, we can do from home.

On top of that, I’m temperamentally well disposed to being stuck in the house. Anyone who knows me will know that two of my least favourite things are going places and doing stuff, especially now I’ve reached the age where I’m most comfortable in an elasticated waistband.

As long as the wifi kept working, I reckon I could outsit a nuclear winter, no problem. (But if the broadband goes down, heaven help us: that’s when we’ll all start joining those motorbike gangs and eating roadkill. No-one wants to contemplate surviving the apocalypse on dial-up.)

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention, either, that I am not one of the millions of heroes who are currently keeping this country going. So I’d like to finish by saying thank you.

Thanks to the doctors and nurses and paramedics and receptionists and the care workers and the community volunteers and teachers and the checkout staff and the shelfstackers and the delivery drivers and the postmen and women and all the wonderful people who keep the wheels of society turning, through good times and bad, for precious little reward and recognition.

And thanks to you, reading this, for all the many small acts of kindness you’ve probably done in recent weeks, without even thinking about it.

We’ve seen a lot of the worst of humanity in recent years. But, right now, I feel like we’re getting a glimpse of the best of it.

‘It’s hard enough trying to keep your spirits up without having some ripped gym bunny in your face’