Fergie’s story has a happy ending.. but does Andrew’s?
Gather round children. Don’t be afraid of the strange lady in the red cape.
It’s not the wicked witch of York (though that might be what Prince Philip calls her). It’s jolly Fergie, above, from Fergie and Friends.
Because she has nothing else to do, Sarah
Ferguson has taken to dressing up and reading children’s stories. Her YouTube channel now has 300,000 followers.
Some of the films are made at Royal Lodge, which she shares with Prince Andrew.
No wonder she’s an expert in fairy stories.
Asking for a friend.
Far be it from me to suggest but the first person any mother sees breaching virussuppression rules and therefore jeopardising the full-time return to school of our kids on August 11 could find themselves huckled to the ground, Finn Russell-style, and fitted with a surgical mask while the cops are summoned to take the reckless fool away.
The “reckless fool” is the potential Covid-spreader, of course, not the desperate, exhausted, scabby-haired, furry-legged mum who would simply be safeguarding her kids’ future and her own sanity.
After three months of home-schooling, the end is in sight. It’s so tantalisingly close you can almost taste it. Nothing and no one is going to stand in our way. We have hand sanitiser and we’re not afraid to use it.
Education Secretary John Swinney has put us through the wringer, preparing us for a blended-learning existence with kids in school only a couple of days a week, the rest of their studies carried out at home.
I’d already received detailed instruction from the council on how it would work. My two boys at secondary school would attend five days over any two-week period; my daughter at primary would be in class on Thursdays and Fridays only (Wednesdays would see the school closed for deep cleaning).
The remainder of the time, it would be up to Schoolmarm Mum or Dominie Dad to make sure the little darlings were actually doing coursework and not playing Fortnite eight hours a day.
In our house, we’d been coping with the prospect with grace and good humour. Not.
Remember the sitcom scene when Captain Edmund Blackadder pretends he’s insane with underpants on his head and a pencil up each nostril? It was a bit like that. Wibble. (Well, it would have been like that but no one seems able to find a bloomin’ pencil in this bloomin’ house ’cause no one puts any bloomin’ thing away!).
So we were knocked for six by the surprise news on Tuesday that Swinney now foresees schools going back to normal teaching in August, so long as the infection rates continue to fall.
The contingency plans for blended learning will remain in place, ready to be pulled out of the drawer and enacted at any suggestion the virus is beginning to take hold again.
And that is reason enough, we parents would argue, for making sure everyone adheres strictly to the rules.
The FM has opened up a whole new level of freedom. As of next Friday, we can even go on an anxiety-busting staycation. Hallelujah.
But anyone taking a rise out of the liberty is sending us back to home school hell. And we’ve learned quite enough already, thanks very much.
I’ve learned that toilet breaks are ruthlessly – and disgustingly – exploited by lazy students. It took weeks to notice that my son was spending hours in the loo, till I walked past the toilet door and heard the YouTube video he was watching. The phone was confiscated (and sterilised).
I discovered nine-year-old girls ask a lot of questions while “learning” and very few are of any relevance to the subject at hand. “Mum, why is your hair all different colours?” “Mum, have you stopped wearing make-up forever?” And my personal favourite: “Mum, what age are you REALLY?”
Sin, cos and tan are not the names of the characters on the Rice Krispies box, though trigonometry does make the brain snap, crackle and pop, and physics is just as incomprehensible 30 years after you first tried to understand it.
So, Mr Swinney, thank you for the escape plan. And teachers, thank you for your efforts. Now please, please don’t change your minds about taking the blighters back.
We are mothers, we have face coverings and we’re prepared to shoulder-tackle.