Sinead Ryan

A lockdown stay at the Holiday Inn? Say no more, sign me up

LOCKDOWN is getting to us in different ways, but all are depressingly familiar.

Many parents are juggling home schooling, work, house and family. They’re teacher, psychologist,

PE instructor, nurse, playmate, cleaner and cook.

Some are realising that the people they love the most aren’t actually the people they like the most.

When restrictions lift, rather than heading to the airport, many couples will be heading to divorce courts. An on-the-run West Sussex criminal went one step further. According to police, the man handed himself into custody because he could no longer stand living with his family in lockdown.

Presenting himself to Burgess Hill police station, he said he craved the ‘peace and quiet’ a jail cell would offer. “He informed us he would rather go back to prison than have to spend more time with the people he was living with,” said the police following the easy collar.

It got me thinking.

Perhaps the Government’s mandatory quarantine project isn’t a bad idea. For stressed-out mothers that is, not just tourists arriving from red-zone countries.

If the average day under the current prevailing circumstances sees you fielding kids, shopping, cooking, home schooling, dealing with toddler tantrums and unsympathetic partners, you might find the idea of an enforced stay in an airport hotel something of a relief.

Not because you want to breach regulations and fly to the sun, but because it keeps your family away from you.

OK, so it’s a warm bath instead of a spa, three regulation meals a day (left outside the door on a tray, but what the hell, you didn’t have to cook them), a view of Terminal 2 instead of Tuscany and your walks within 5 metres rather than 5km but, honestly, when things get too much, which of us wouldn’t take a Holiday Inn if we can’t have a holiday?

Calculated to make you rethink those bath salts

New legislation is set to be passed making it illegal to lobby a teacher to get better calculated grades in the Leaving Cert.

The Government has signed off on the exam roll-out following hefty negotiations with teacher unions so that 50,000 or so Leaving Cert students can sit their exams.

The Lobbying Register was set up in 2015 as an anti-corruption measure, but I’m not sure legislators envisaged having to put sixth-years on it.

Will the new bill make it illegal to give the traditional bath salts or bottle of wine at end of term?

Will a handmade thank-you card be subject to a fingerprint check?

Will the guards knock on your door if you send a teacher a Dunnes Stores voucher?

We should be told.

A right royal rumble for TV ratings hit

BUCKINGHAM Palace stole a march on the wayward branch of the royal family by scheduling the queen’s address to the Commonwealth on the same day as Harry and Meghan’s address to Oprah.

It’ll be a ratings winner in this particular long-running soap opera; a coup by the show’s writers.

Advertising slots are already selling out, we hear.