A strange back to school
Home seems lonely without my son playing loud video games and constantly asking for food
Normally, he would run in and start playing - instead, he joined a queue to wash his hands
Abig day yesterday: my son finally went back to school. It felt strange. Possibly more for us than for him. It was the first time in two months that we’d spent so much as a minute without him.
He didn’t seem bothered. Then again, six-year-old boys have more important things to think about than boring old pandemics. Lego, Harry Potter, the urgent need to find the spawn egg for a zombie pigman in Minecraft. So his mind was probably on higher things.
His pink little paw in mine, we walked along our old route, past window after window of felt-tip rainbows. It was the quietest school run I’ve ever known. Few cars, and even fewer pedestrians. One street was entirely silent but for the cooing of a lone pigeon on a chimney pot.
The school gate was far less busy than usual: only three year groups were due to return, and not all the children in them had come. Normally, my son would run in and start playing, but, on the order of the headmistress, he joined a queue of children, waiting to wash their hands at a new tap in the playground.
For a moment, I stayed and watched him: standing silent and alone in slightly ill-fitting shorts and blazer, clutching his packed lunch, and looking somehow like a tiny evacuee.
When I got back, home felt odd. Empty, and eerily quiet. There was no one playing ipad games at an unreasonable volume, or dancing to Black Eyed Peas videos, or endlessly asking, “What can I eat? Can I have a Mullerice? Can I have grapes? Can I have a custard cream?” I was able to read the paper, and sit down with a coffee, and write this column without having to break off every 15 minutes to be thrashed at Hungry Hungry Hippos.
I didn’t like it. It was lonely. As if I’d just packed the boy off for his first term at university, rather than for seven hours at school. Which is silly, because he’s been at school for almost two years. His absence isn’t something new. Yet the past two months have been so long and intense, normality no longer feels normal.
vAt half past three we went to pick him up. I asked him how his day was. He immediately launched into a comprehensive account.
“There was only six people in my room and they’ve made the playground into four pieces and we can only go in one of the pieces and we played Pirates and I didn’t eat the cheese sandwich because I didn’t like the cheese and Jay hit Charlie with a wooden spoon.”
Well. Sounds as though he was happy enough. And given how few children were in his class, it’s probably about as safe as it can be. Apart from the wooden spoon.