LETTERS FROM LOCKDOWN

MICHAEL DEACON

Our son has never expressed any worries about the virus. And that, in turn, worried us. What if he was secretly frightened? Wouldn’t it be better if he talked to his parents about it?

Happily, a children’s author is helping families with this very problem. Everybody Worries, by Jon Burgerman, is a new e-book about the pandemic, written to encourage children to share their fears. So we sat down with the boy, and read it.

“Let’s talk to each other, we might all feel the same,” suggested the book. “Let’s draw our worries, and give them a name.”

“Draw our worries,” I said. “What a good idea. Could you draw what you’re worried about?”

But the boy shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s too difficult to draw.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “We can just talk about it.”

“No,” he said again. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Well, I thought. At least we’re getting somewhere. He’s admitted that he is worried about something. If only he would tell us what.

Then the boy made a suggestion. “Give me your ipad,” he said. “I’ll Google it.”

I was puzzled, but handed it over. He tapped away at the screen. “Here it is,” he said. I peered over his shoulder.

The boy’s secret worry, it turned out, was a bizarre cartoon monster called Siren Head. It looked a bit like ET – except ganglier, weedier, and with two sirens on its head. Apparently, it’s in a video game he heard about on Youtube.

“It eats people,” explained the boy simply. “It’s really tall, and it has long arms, and…”

It’s good to talk: what could Michael’s son be frightened of?

He actually sounded quite enthusiastic about it. The pandemic, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to intrude into his thoughts at all. Perhaps, in a way, playing video games is doing him good.

vI’m currently reading a perfect book for lockdown: How to Be a Footballer, by Peter Crouch. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like football. It isn’t really about that. Instead, it’s a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the oddness of players’ lives. In any case, it makes a very enjoyable distraction: breezy, cheerful and, above all, funny.

I love his description of England players in 1990 watching Nigel Kennedy perform Vivaldi. “I’m not sure how many of them had heard of Nigel. I’m not sure some of them had heard of the violin… Trevor Steven looks as if he’s just spotted Hitler walking in. Peter Beardsley looks like he’s just foreseen his own death.”

In this book, footballers come across like Bertie Wooster and his fellow Drones: daft young dandies who, for all their silly scrapes, are impossible not to like. The difference being, of course, that these modern-day Tuppy Glossops earned their wealth through talent and hard work, rather than inheriting it.

Michael Deacon’s Letters from Lockdown returns tomorrow

Corona fun for all the family The day I challenged my son to a round of Name Your Fear…

‘It turned out his secret worry was a cartoon monster with two sirens on its head’