Youngest has been anxious.

I’m rubbish at learning online!

How on earth would you know, sweetheart?

I’m going to do so badly. Plus, I keep falling asleep.

This is true. For ten days, Youngest felt so dizzy that she could barely stand. And nauseous. And feverish.

Ok, so this is what happened. We’re all in lock-down, right? Nobody doing anything or going anywhere. No chance of anyone in this household catching anything and dying.

Guess who introduces Covid-19 symptoms to the household? 2nd Youngest: rudest, most boisterous and offensively loud and Tiggerish member of the household. (Even a household that has me in it.) And with the rudest health. (Ditto.)

How?

I probably contracted it helping a rough sleeper.

How, Ben?

I gave him an apple. Our hands touched.

(We have just come out of our corner shop Sainsbury’s together – no, of course we don’t both go shopping at once! That would be VERY irresponsible. We met there, by chance. Incompetent, perhaps. Inefficient and uncommunicative in sharing our shopping needs, possibly. Irresponsible, I refute. On the way out, he handed the sandwiches he’d just bought to the chap sitting on the pavement outside. Cheers mate. They obviously know each other.)

Didn’t you wash your hands afterwards?

Of course I did. There’s a reason for the two-meter rule. Duh.

So… (trying to claw back some dignity)… couldn’t you have thrown that bloke the sandwiches you just bought for him?

Laughs. Even 2nd Y isn’t that rude. Well, I’ve had it now, haven’t I.

You don’t know that.

Anyway, Youngest – who caught the symptoms off 2nd Y, but is now nearly better – was on time for breakfast. First Day of Term. She has to register by 9am and is supposed to look dressed.

Not bad.

What is that?! She looks at the arrangement on the table.

No idea, I say. Second Daughter maybe?

(Those who have followed my other blog will know 2nd D is mad. Currently stuck here, which is quite entertaining. Though less entertaining than it might be, because current routine is to go to bed at breakfast time and get up for a late dinner. And mostly live off ciggies and beer and prescription drugs as far as I can see.)

Presumably, I posit, she is counting off the days of imprisonment so far. Hang on… (Bear with me: takes a while to count, at that time in the morning)… why is she counting in 8-day weeks?

You MORONS, 2nd Y says as he comes up the stairs from his den. (Now, unfortunately for the rest of us, completely better of all symptoms.) Can’t you tell what that is? It’s my first lesson of the morning. Junior Class in Western Music. Obviously. What Western Music gave the world…

Oh yes, I interrupt intelligently. The Octave.

The Octave? The Octave?! You idiots. Those are drumbeats.

Well, of course they are.

I knew that.

Since she started recovering from Covid-19 symptoms, our Youngest has been doing something which feels rather un-teenaged:

Now then Daddums, she says over supper. What are you grateful for today?

I’ve survived another day of trying to do your mother’s tax return without killing her. (That’s right: my 2018-19 tax return… which I only care about now, suddenly, in the rather wild and desperately slim hope that the nice Mr Taxman might give us 80% of our non-existent self-employment earnings which I couldn’t be bothered to tell him about until now. It’s ok: Husband got Permission for Late Filing Because HMRC Website Bust.)

What about you, Brother dear, Youngest says to Second Youngest who is none-the-less (in theory) an adult. Except when in presence of Youngest. Or indeed anyone else.

That I haven’t had to see you all day until this moment.

Love you too. What about you, Mumsie?

Um. I say. Racking my brains for anything I can remember of the day. The NHS?

Swot, says 2nd Y.

Also ok. He talks like this all the time. It’s a sign of affection. Apparently. He’s too embarrassed to tell me he loves me. Or his younger sister. Or anyone at all. On account of being an Englishman.

Anyway, here I am, starting a Gratitude Blog, about all the things we have To Be Grateful For.

Feel free to chip in.

And the first thing, genuinely, I’m going to profess myself grateful for is all the gratitude out there.

Really. I mean it. I have friends in desperate straits (we are in pretty desperate straits ourselves) and they are saying to me, We are safe, and well. We are fortunate.

We are.

(I full appreciate you may not be. You may have lost someone. Still, please, chip in.)

I don’t promise that all of this blog will be cheerful. All I am promising is to be here. Connecting. And remembering as much as possible of all the good things in my life.

Today is our older son’s birthday.

It is also Day 1 of the Summer Term.

Please join me…