The Sound of Having Fun.

        One hundred and thirty-one days after they last walked out of the gates, the boys went back to school this morning. One of the first teachers we met was wearing a face mask. Her eyes suggested that she was smiling at them as she said, “I expect you’ve seen a lot of people wearing these, haven’t you?” Of course, they haven’t. Generally speaking, we don’t wear them around the house – although the boys have been known to adopt all sorts of improvised face coverings when they’re being Ninja warriors (which is most weeks), and there are Hulk and Darth Vader masks knocking about somewhere. Otherwise, no, they haven’t seen lots of people wearing masks.

        Rather naively I’d been thinking about the extent to which a return to school would represent a return to normality for the boys, but I find myself wondering if in fact the opposite is likely to be the case. They’ve been living in a domestic bubble which is free of face masks and hand sanitizer, free of social distancing and the regular swiping of surfaces with disinfectant wipes. They’ve been living in a bubble of hugs and sunshine, of long games of cricket and sitting on a knee to hear a story read. The coronavirus lockdown has, in many important ways, shielded the boys from the culture of fear, distance and relentless hygiene which has gripped the world outside our walls. Going back to school is actually a journey away from what normality usually looks like for our boys.

 

            First I collected James, and then we went together to collect Barnaby. The two boys embraced, and talked about how strange it was to both be at the same school and yet not see each other at all, the whole long day.

I asked them about their days, as we were walking home. Barnaby told us that he’d done some learning about the Coronavirus, and that he’d also been learning about the senses: “I had to say what my favourite sound is, and I wrote, ‘the sound of James having fun.’”