Author Archives: bluesingingdragon

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About bluesingingdragon

Mum to an EGID son and a food allergy daughter. Full-time accountant and supporter of Over The Wall.

Camp in the Cloud – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 20

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Since their first camps in 2016, G and M have looked forward to the start of every year to find out if they have got a place at their choice of Over The Wall camps. The initial outcome of this year’s applications saw both children on the waiting lists for their respective choices and, in M’s case in particular, with fingers tightly crossed that they might be lucky enough to make it to the actual camp when the time came about.

Like so many other activities, the coronavirus pandemic understandably shut down the Over The Wall camps this year, something that we all understood although it did leave the children somewhat disappointed. However, no sooner had we been advised that camp wouldn’t be happening this year, than an email was sent telling us that they were looking into a virtual alternative and to keep an eye out for future updates to be sent. It didn’t take long for the final details to reach me and both children eagerly signed up to the first ever Camp in the Cloud.

M was first up with the online South Health Challenges Camp and about 2 weeks before the start of camp his Camp in the Cloud box arrived on our doorstep. He did a grand reveal and shared opening his box with my Mum and Aunt over Face Time on the Saturday afternoon. Hidden inside was a padlocked box, sealed envelopes labelled for each day, face paints, a stationery set and, most importantly, his team t-shirt revealing he’s risen to the heady heights of being a green boy. The box also included a pot of M-friendly hot chocolate for cabin chat. The note on the container reminded him he could make it with the dairy-free milk alternative of his choice – a small thing that showed just how much OTW focuses on the finer details for each and every camper in their care. They also followed that up with an email just before camp began to remind me to check the ingredients to make sure I was confident that it was safe for M to drink.

The week of Camp in the Cloud came at a perfect time for M. It was a good start to his so-say summer holidays and proved to be a great distraction from the sad news of losing Grandpa the weekend before. The daily challenges gave him a focused activity to try his hand at and he loved being able to explore the virtual campsite, searching for the hidden Newman’s sauce bottles and participating in all his favourite camp activities in one way or another. The highlight of each day was most definitely the camp chat via Zoom, which gave him around 45 minutes to meet his team mates, accept, or set, team challenges and just chat in a face-to-face context, something he hasn’t really been able to do since lockdown began.

I was intrigued to see what M’s response to the week would be and it couldn’t have been more positive. Whilst he commented that it obviously wasn’t as good as going to camp itself, he loved being part of it and having something different to do after so many weeks of the same old, same old. Being able to dip in and out of the online platform during the day worked perfectly for my usually active child and the evening cabin chats really made it feel like camp. M was so impressed with the camp that he even contacted OTW himself to suggest that Camp in the Cloud is something they could continue to do in the future. He loves going to camp and always feels the bitter disappointment when he isn’t successful in getting a place. M believes that being able to offer Camp in the Cloud to those children who aren’t able to go the physical camp would be a great alternative and would reach out to offer the fantastic OTW experience to even more campers than they usually can. Whether they consider doing that, we simply don’t know, but anything we can do to help make it a reality we will.

Now we’re onto the countdown for G’s Midlands siblings camp at the end of the month – and she just can’t wait!

Grief in Lockdown – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 19

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Lockdown hasn’t been easy anywhere around the world, but the last 10 weeks or so have been really challenging for our family. Mike’s Dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma back in 2012 and has spent the last 8 years valiantly fighting against this disease. Sadly, last weekend that battle came to an end and a much-loved Dad, Father-in-Law and Grandpa passed away. Despite Mike travelling back to Canada just over a week ago, he is currently stuck in quarantine and didn’t manage to see his Dad in person before he died, although he has spent time nearly every day of the last 10 weeks speaking to both of his parents either on the phone or via video-call.

The grief that has hit G and M is reminisce of that from 2 years ago when my Uncle passed away, and the 3 of us still in the UK are pulling together to support each other as we work through a gamut of emotions alongside the added strain of Mike now being away from home until the beginning of September. They have many wonderful memories of the last 16  years and I’m so glad that they both were able to spend precious time with Grandpa despite the ocean between us.

Grandpa, you will be greatly missed, but we know you’re now resting easy after a long, well-fought battle and are no longer in any pain xxx

 

 

Family connections – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 18

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One of the changes that many people have experienced during last few months of lockdown has been more limited contact with their family members. Mike’s parents, brothers and their families are all in Canada and his usual contact with them can be sporadic at best, reliant on emails, FB messages and the occasional phone-call. Due to some changes in family circumstances in the last couple of months, Mike is now using both FaceTime and WhatsApp on an almost daily basis to stay in touch as well as get and give more regular updates from both sides of the pond.

G and M usually spend time with my Mum on a very regular basis be that after school or during the school holidays, and haven’t been able to do that since the middle of March. Instead we’ve replaced that time with regular phone-calls and weekly FaceTime chats on a Saturday so Mum can actually see how we’re all doing and we can compare current hairstyles, which always brings a smile. A couple of weeks ago we even managed a face-to-face meeting in our garden and fortunately the weather didn’t stop the happening, although it perhaps wasn’t as warm and sunny as we’d have liked.

Last week though, was a new venture for us. Following on from the success of our weekly quizzes, M proposed a family quiz and asked each member of the family to set a round of 10 questions on any subject they wanted. I added an additional round, pulled together all 8 rounds into a Powerpoint before hosting the quiz via Zoom. We covered a range of subjects from Star Wars to literature and from pop culture to facts and figures relating to our birthdays. It was a great way to spend an afternoon together, full of laughter and a few frustrated brows when obvious answers were missed. And, already a repeat performance has been requested, though I don’t quite know when it will happen!

End of Term – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 17

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And just like that it’s the end of the school year and the end of G’s secondary school career. From September she’ll have moved to the heady heights of further education here in the UK, although she’s still not decided as to exactly what she’ll be studying or where. It’s been an odd culmination of the last few years of hard work and has left us all feeling a little discombobulated. It’s not quite the end of the 7Y2D home-school as I have already warned both M and G that I fully expect them to keep up with some studies over the coming weeks and M has already been set some tasks by school to challenge him in preparation for his GCSE courses that will soon be starting.

They do have some fun activities planned for the summer too, with both children being invited to join Over The Wall’s “Camp in the Cloud”, something they’re both excited about as this photo of M opening his box shows. We will also no doubt take advantage of the freedom of more movement by embarking on a few hand-picked and carefully chosen day trips starting and ending at home. Our plans for a summer extravaganza to celebrate the end of G’s GCSEs have been put on hold for the foreseeable, but we will make sure that her results day is still marked in style. Truthfully it’s not the summer we had planned, but then 2020 hasn’t really been the year we were expecting it to be either. One thing’s for certain, this is a year unlike any other and we’ve all experienced life in a new way in the last 17 or so weeks.

Keeping in Touch – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 16

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How have you found keeping in touch whilst we’ve been on lockdown?

Zoom has certainly come into its own since March, with businesses, individuals and groups using this technology for just about every event and occasion imaginable. I find myself on this video conferencing platform almost daily with a combination of management meetings, team meetings, webinars and our Sunday morning post-Church service “coffee chat”. We’ve used it for quiz nights and catching up with friends in Canada, although a number of those have also been accessed through FaceTime, Facebook Live and YouTube. I’m even about to embark on some Zoom interviews for a role within our finance team at work, although I’ve still to work out how to facilitate the excel-based competency test we usually ask candidates to complete under timed conditions in our office.

M has become an expert on MS Teams as his secondary school has finally managed to get itself organised enough to run some “live” lessons for some subjects in the last 5 weeks or so of the school year. He also uses it for his weekly lesson with our local dyslexia centre, who had everything in place as soon as the Easter holidays were over, and have offered him a week’s worth of daily lessons in August so that he doesn’t miss out too much on the learning and support they would have been doing with him since lockdown started.

G will be using MS Teams tomorrow as her tutor has organised an online face-to-face farewell session for her tutor group before she has an unquestionably late induction to the 6th form at her current school in case she decides to stay on there in September. For G, there has been very little contact with the school over the last 15 weeks. There has been no active teaching or engagement with the 300 students in her year group and many of them will not be returning in September as they move on to other schools and apprenticeships for the next step in their studies. Whilst we thought that the contact with M from school had been mediocre at best, for G it has been devastatingly pitiful and has done absolutely nothing to give her any semblance of any support during what has been a challenging time for us all, let alone for those students where the opportunity to take GCSEs and A-levels was suddenly snatched away.

As I mentioned last week, M took his first steps back to life as normal as it possibly can be these days with a return to school for a one hour session yesterday lunchtime. He was in with 8 other members of his tutor group, including 2 of his closest friends and it was a great opportunity to catch up and actually see other people for the first time in months. He wore his face mask into school, but chose to take it off during the session as the desks in the classroom had all been spaced 2 metres apart. He enjoyed the time they had and it gave him a much-needed change of scenery too.

We also met up with my Mum for the first time properly since lockdown began, although it was via a socially distanced cup of tea in our garden – Mum bringing her own flask of hot water, tea-bags, mug and chair with her! I have been either calling or texting her daily to give her regular updates about how we all are, and weekly Face Times with the children as well to give her and them an opportunity to chat. Sunday was the first chance for us all to be together for an extended length of time in person, something that I think we all needed. The weather wasn’t quite as glorious as it has been in previous weeks, but it was dry enough for long enough to allow us to sit out comfortably together and enjoy that time.

Re-opening the World – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 15

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How has the easing of lockdown affected you and your family? Have you gone back to life as it was pre-lockdown, are you still following strict social distancing or shielding rules, or are you slowly working towards finding your feet in your new normal?

The last few days have been interesting ones for me as I’ve started to receive phone-calls from local services and businesses as they begin to re-open their doors and are keen to get people in after months of self-isolation. I’m sure there are those that will think I’m being overly cautious, but my answer to each of those enquiries has been simple: thank you, but no thank you, not at the moment. Having strictly restricted my movements over the last 15 weeks, I’m not in any rush to get back to the way things were before lockdown happened and will be keenly watching to see what happens over the next few weeks, particularly as pubs and restaurants reopen this weekend as well as some other businesses.

We’ve also been prepping to make sure we have everything we need as we do start to move towards relaxing our own version of lockdown. Despite the reluctance of the UK government to mandate the wearing of face masks or coverings when out and about in England, we have discussed the importance of them with G and M and agreed that the whole family will be wearing them once we start to venture further afield. Mike is already wearing a mask daily as he travels for his work and M has independently decided that he will wear his when he goes into school next week for an hour-long “keeping in touch” session before the end of the school year.

Both children had input into the face masks that they wanted to have and are happy to wear them when needed. We knew that having their buy-in was important, not least because there is a requirement to wear them when going into hospital for appointments and sooner or later that will be necessary for M and me, although we both currently have either telephone or video appointments booked for later this month.

Whatever your movements this weekend, be it to your local pub, restaurant or simply more staying at home, stay safe and keep well.

Surviving the weather – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 14

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I know that it’s a very British thing to do, but I can’t possibly let another week slip by without mentioning the weather! When lockdown started what feels like a lifetime ago, the world experienced an influx of rainbows as communities looked to spread a little hope and happiness to all who saw them. G and M created their own rainbow masterpiece to display in the window nearest the road snaking past our house and we enjoyed spotting them in so many different locations as we ventured out for our daily exercise around the neighbourhood.

Friends and family in Canada and in Scotland were hit by an astonishingly late snowfall in early May, whilst in our part of the world we were experiencing weeks of unparalleled sunshine. The children loved being able to spend so much time outside on the trampoline or on bike rides, whilst Mike took advantage of the good weather and his time on furlough to tackle many of the gardening projects that have been lingering on his to-do list for an awfully long time.

And then, this time last week, everything changed. Our village and the surrounding areas were hit by huge storms, flash floods and all the problems that comes with such heavy rain. We had our own personal drama when the electricity transformer in the field next to our house exploded due to the combination of the wet weather and a faulty cable with a hole, knocking out the power not only in our house, but in half the village too. Fortunately, it turns out we have a secondary connection to the mains electricity, so we only in fact lost power for around 10 minutes, although the internet connection took a lot longer to re-establish.

7 days on and we’re back to the glorious sunshine of a few weeks ago and even hotter temperatures. My sister-in-law in Canada told me they’re experiencing a similarly high 30°+, but the humidex (humidity index) has made it feel like 37° or more. Yesterday was filled with ice creams, ice-cold drinks and staying in the shade and today has seen more of the same. The only question now is whether the thunder storm forecast for early tomorrow morning actually hits or not and brings a little relief with it.

 

Channelling Creativity – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 13

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When writing my blog posts, I usually find that inspiration will hit for the next during the writing process, although I do occasionally find myself scrabbling around for ideas to develop and explore. This post is the result of one such experience. The truth about the last 13 weeks for most of us is that one week has very much been like another. In our household, weekdays have, and continue to involve, getting up and ready for the day, heading downstairs for work or homeschooling, some venturing out for water, lunch and copious amounts of coffee and eventually the end of the day, for me at least.

Evenings are time for family, daily exercise and bed. Weekends vary a little with no work and much longer walks with the children, but the truth is, there isn’t necessarily a lot of new and exciting things to share with anyone most of the time.

However, the one thing we have been doing is spending time developing some new skills and channelling the creativity hiding inside. With no choir rehearsals, sports or performing arts going on, it’s been really important to find other ways to spend our free time. As I’ve mentioned before, M has been honing his photography skills in preparation of starting his GCSE syllabus next year, whilst both he and G have been choosing to bake different treats every couple of weeks, which have been delicious to taste-test afterwards. G also decided that she wanted to share her joy of dancing with our community as a whole, so every lunchtime, 6 days a week, she goes out for an hour’s exercise and dances her way through our village.

I have also been feeding my inner creativity by learning to knit, a skill that both my Dad and my Gran first shared with me as a child and something I’ve long been tempted to revisit. Someone in our village offered some “How to Knit” kits near to the start of lockdown and whilst I don’t think I’ll be winning any awards for the end results, it’s been fun to relearn how to do it. And thanks to the discovery of a box of brand-new baby clothes and other paraphenalia from a few years ago hiding in the study, I’ve spent a few hours creating some baby bouquets and clothes bundles. With the help of one of the ward sisters, we’ve been able to donate these to

the NICU at our local hospital, somewhere that looked after both G and M at the very start of their lives. G helped out here as well, by making some beautiful hand-drawn congratulations postcards to accompany each bundle. It was fab to not only flex my creative muscles once again, but to also work with G to create something beautiful we could share with others in our community.

Working from Home – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 12

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The last 12 weeks have seen thousands of people starting to work from home on a much more regular basis than they might have done before and I know that for some, that situation will continue for the foreseeable future, if not as a permanent change to their work location going forward. The reality of lockdown has meant that businesses have had to review and consider how they work, and can work in the future, especially where this means that potential savings could be made and help them to survive the current financial crisis.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I am carrying on working from home and will be for an as-yet-to-be-determined amount of time. Working for a charity within the care sector, we are taking a very cautious approach with our work processes in order to protect our service users as much as we can and that same approach is being applied to those of us who work in the Head Office. Our Board of Trustees and Senior Management Team (SMT) are anticipating that our regular meetings will continue to be virtual for several months and our Head Office will continue to be manned by a skeleton staff whilst the rest of us work from home until further notice.

Working from home can come with its own challenges, be that about motivation and focus, or working excessive hours because it can be difficult to switch off mid-task; or, these days, the juggling act required to manage workloads, team dynamics and meetings alongside homeschooling and childcare. I attended a webinar a few weeks ago run by recruitment consultants, Robert Half, which looked at the pressures that working parents have felt during the lockdown period and the importance of changing the way we look at things for our own mental wellbeing.

One of the key messages from this webinar was that those of us who are working parents should aim to be a “good enough” parent, rather than a “perfect” parent. We may have started lockdown with ambitions to conquer the combined dizzying heights of homeschooling and working from home, but many, if not all, have struggled to achieve their own goals and the knock-on effect on motivation and wellbeing has been huge. Seeking virtual support from friends and family as well as setting more realistic goals for what can be achieved each day and not beating ourselves up about if we don’t manage to tick everything off the list is critical.

There were also some great suggestions about how to help yourself and your children get through lockdown. My favourite ones included using your usual commute time for some me-time however that looks like for you; or as a family making notes of the things we’re missing doing the most and saving those into an empty box or jar. Once we’re out of lockdown completely, you can pick those notes out and work your way through each experience. At the end of the day, succeeding at working from home might not look quite as you imagined it would, but getting through this time relatively unscathed is, without a doubt, the most important thing of all.

Easing Lockdown – 7Y2D COVID-19 Diaries Week 11

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How things have changed in the last week in the UK. The government announced that we could start easing the lockdown measures that have been in place since the end of March, a decision that has received mixed reactions from across the country. Changes have been discussed at the daily briefings, or published via press releases late at night, and all too frequently there has not been sufficient detail or further explanations provided to give comfort to anyone expressing concern that maybe we’re moving ahead too quickly when considering current statistics.

As lockdown eases, I’m able to continue to work from home for the time being, which has been especially reassuring given the recent publication of scientific research into the risk of COVID-19 on those living with diabetes. We had all been advised that those living with underlying health conditions were at higher risk during the pandemic, but the evidence suggests a particular link with diabetes and other health factors, some of which are relevant to me, others that aren’t. I won’t be changing the way I’m working at the moment and continue to limit myself to being at home or out for a walk in the area surrounding our village, somewhere I haven’t left since lockdown began.

Both G and M continue with their homeschooling and it was confirmed just before half-term that neither of them will return to school before September at the earliest. We continue to balance school-work with other activities to keep them entertained during the day, but they are yearning to spend some time with friends, although they do understand why that just isn’t possible at the moment. Our old trampoline finally gave up the ghost with a number of springs popping off in the first few weeks of lockdown, but we managed to get an order in for a replacement one and M has been waiting eagerly for it to arrive. The delivery finally happened at the start of this week and the introduction of a 16 foot trampoline to our paddock is certainly a sight to see. G and M have already been out bouncing as much as they possibly can and it’s definitely big enough to accommodate them both at the same time.

The biggest change with the easing of lockdown is for Mike. Having been furloughed on 1 April, he has spent the last couple of months doing a number of DIY jobs around the house and garden, but that is now coming to an end as he starts back at work tomorrow. This has come with its own set of concerns, not least about how Mike can best protect himself to minimise the risk of him bringing COVID-19 home to either M or me. We have agreed a process whereby he will change in the garage as soon as he gets home from work, put his clothes straight into the washing machine and will then come in and go straight to the shower before coming into contact with the rest of us. He has also been provided with a supply of PPE to wear throughout his day as he travels between houses to complete surveys and valuations. Finally, as I have taken over his study for my home office, he will be using the desk in the spare bedroom for when he needs to work on his reports.

What does the lockdown easing mean for you and your family? Are you returning to your new version of “normal”, or taking a more cautious approach for the next few weeks? Whatever you’re doing, stay safe and keep well.