‘We’re planning to send Mia back to school come June’
Mike Tindall talks to Eleanor Steafel about how he, wife Zara and their royal relatives are coping during the coronavirus lockdown
Mike Tindall has spent much of lockdown asking himself a question by now familiar to parents up and down the country: what would a teacher do?
Over the past eight weeks, the Tindalls have joined the legions of families juggling home-schooling one child while keeping a toddler occupied, supporting vulnerable loved ones from afar, and trying to get some work done in between it all.
With his wife Zara, 39, still needing to put in the hours training her horses on the Gatcombe Park estate in Gloucestershire, where they live, the schedule of Year One classes for their eldest daughter Mia, six, has mainly been shepherded by Mike, 41 – to varying degrees of success.
“Zara still has hopes that the horses will get back, they still need training and working on, so I get to be a teacher in the mornings, which is sometimes really nice, sometimes really frustrating,” he tells me over Zoom. His Zoom background, incidentally, looks like a rather impressive bookcase – but in fact, he reveals with a wry smile: “It’s wallpaper. I’m not that well read.”
The home-schooling, he says, hasn’t always been a walk in the park. “I don’t think any child is a great home-schooler because they definitely listen to other people better than they listen to their parents.
“[Mia] can be brilliant one minute, and then something you’ve seen her do a thousand times, she’ll just go, ‘I don’t know how to do that’, and then you go, ‘Well, I know you do’, and she’ll just say, ‘No, I don’t’, and then you get frustrated, and you’re trying not to get frustrated. She enjoyed it the first week because it was different being around Mum and Dad all the time,” he says. “But then, ultimately, it’s the same people who are telling her off or telling her what to do and I think then she gets bored of that.”
They are hoping Mia will return to school on June 1, as per the Government’s plan to allow Reception,
Year One and Year Six children back into the classroom. “The plan is, at the moment, that she would go back, but obviously that’s still up in the air,” he says. “Every day you read different things… we’ll just have to wait.
“There is no ideal situation,” he adds, but is encouraged by statistics suggesting children are unlikely to suffer from coronavirus or pass it on to adults. “As long as they’re doing everything they can to make it as safe as possible,” he believes reopening would be a positive step. He’s also keen to ensure the girls maintain their independent spirits. “They definitely enjoy having that full-time attention, but you also want them to have some independence. That’s the side you want them to keep developing.”
Tindall is also navigating the tricky business of supporting parents who are shielding. His mum and dad live 200-odd miles away in West Yorkshire; his father, Phil, has lived with Parkinson’s for 17 years, and his mother, Linda, has asthma. They have just started to go for the odd dog walk, but have mainly been confined to the house since mid-march.
“It’s just tough… they don’t want to be cooped up but they are very worried about going too far afield and getting too close to everyone else.”
His brother Ian lives a few miles from them, “which is reassuring”, though he worries what would happen if his dad had a fall, as he would be unable to enter their house.
“It would be very difficult for my mum to move a deadweight. And if his medication wears off and he can’t move and he’s not in a place where he can sleep, then mum’s got to try to get him into bed.
“It’s just very tough for her. It’s pretty much like that most of the time, but at least [usually] she knows that she’s got my brother on the doorstep. If you don’t have that it just doesn’t make [for] a very nice environment.”
Whatsapp video calls have taken the place of in-person visits, enabling them to chat to their grandchildren and watch them playing. That is, when Mike can “make them understand how a phone works”.
“Most of the time I’m talking to [Dad’s] head or up his nose. But once you get that sorted, you can get the kids on and that’s what they miss.”
However good the technology, however, “you still can’t have a hug”, he says. “Everyone loves a hug.”
When they are next able to be together, he and Zara’s youngest daughter, Lena (who is about to turn two, and counts Prince Harry among her godparents), will have changed a fair amount in the time since her grandparents last saw her.
“It could be six months since their last visit and a lot changes at that age in six months. All you can do is keep taking photos and videos and sending it to them.” They are also yet to see his mother-in-law, the Princess Royal, who lives in another house on the Gatcombe Estate, in the flesh, but she has been getting to grips with tech, too.
Many royal engagements are now being carried out via video: the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge popped up on Zoom to surprise a bingo session at a care home this week, while even the Queen, who is isolating at Sandringham, has got on board, receiving a video call from the Sussex’s baby, Archie, on her birthday.
“It’s busy still for them,” he says of Princess Anne, who appeared on a call with Second World War veterans earlier this month to mark VE Day.
“She works so hard with all her charities and she’s still got a lot to do, so they’re still in full flow.”
Disappointingly, there have been no Zoom quizzes with the Cambridges or Sussexes, or competitive sourdough action on their Whatsapp group.
“Actually, it hasn’t been that active,” he laughs. “I think everyone is just getting on with it.”
The former England captain has always worn his royal links lightly – in part, one imagines, thanks to his upbringing. He eschewed university, instead joining Bath Rugby at aged 18 and making his national debut against Ireland at Twickenham in 2000. He now realises that this was the same year his dad started to show the initial symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, although it would be another three years until it was diagnosed.
That delay is one reason he is so determined to raise awareness. His annual celebrity golf day raises around £90,000 every year for the Cure Parkinson’s Trust, and though the tournament can’t happen this year, he is running an online auction to raise funds for the Trust, the NHS and the Matt Hampson Foundation, with proceeds to be split between them.
Tindall hopes he can “raise a fair few coins for the coffers”, particularly for the charity founded by his friend, Hampson, who became paralysed from the neck down in a rugby accident in 2005, and is currently in the vulnerable category during lockdown.
“He is already permanently on a ventilator with his fractured and dislocated neck, and he doesn’t know if he can go out until there’s a vaccine,” explains Tindall.
He seems a pretty level-headed, “get on with it” sort of man, but admits he has spent the last two months “up and down a little bit”.
“You get to spend a lot of time with the kids and family which is unbelievable.” But life is also “in a bit of limbo, and you’re trying to fill the day with positive things to keep you mentally attuned and focused.”
A day always works better, he says, “when there’s a bit of a plan around it so you don’t wallow the hours away”.
He still has “a lot of questions about how things will look after”; both for his beloved sport, and the hospitality company he is an ambassador for. “But,” he admits, “I’m ready to break out – when we’re allowed to.”
‘They don’t want to be cooped up, but they are worried about being close to people’