Are we nearly there yet?

I know I said that my blog posts on this new platform would focus on my conversations with the landscape but I was wrong. Simply put, dead wrong.

I grossly under-estimated the strain homeschooling my devil child would put on me. How I imagined I would be able to go outside let alone find a minute’s peace to be able to string a few words together is laughable. Depressingly laughable.

I can’t even have a peaceful moment on the loo without him at the door telling me something completely uninteresting and irrelevant to my existence. I have even stopped pretending to be interested and just reply in a dead voice “yeah, uh-huh, cool” whilst banging my head against the wall. He doesn’t get the message and continues to follow me around like a parrot on my shoulder spouting dribble.

It does my fucking head in. Sometimes I think about jumping out the window just to get away but the truth is he would probably follow me in that too, so I don’t bother.

People say to me that I am such an amazing mother giving him the creative education I give him – bollocks, is what I say. Half the time I feel like an awful mother, and the other half of the time I am not even sure if I like him. Fact.

Are we meant to like our children all the time?

I know they are saying this because they have watched our Live Lockdown Learning Facebook videos which as you may have noticed have gone from one hour to 15 minutes. This is because the time I am actually sober in the day has also drastically reduced, coincidentally in line with the length of the Facebook videos. Just saying.

For most of the day I have a glass in hand, or some days I settle for the bottle, it’s easier that way. They say alcohol is medicinal. I never believed it before but now I am a firm believer. I am reasonably certain that by the end of lockdown the fire service will have to dig me out from under a massive pile of cake crumbs and empty bottles. By then I would have grown into the shape of the armchair.

From morning until night he is there, omnipresent and demanding. Demanding attention and demanding snacks. What is this endless need for snacks? Since when is it remotely normal to have eight meals a day, unless you are a hobbit from the Shire?

Come to think of it, since when are we supposed to be full time parents? I thought the whole contract we have with the state is we give you all this money in taxes and you take our kids off our hands for 7 hours a day? Someone is having a laugh and it sure ain’t me.

My delightful child has now decided that coming on my daily swim with me is a great idea. The short moment in my day when I can exercise and simply be in silence has now been hijacked by a four-foot monster. Even that. That one thing that was mine, my last bastion of defence, gone.

We have to spend the whole journey to the beach pretending we are in a spaceship taking our dragons to planet Criptor so they can absorb elemental energy from the sea. Don’t ask. He talks the entire walk from car to sea, lecturing me on dragon lore and making all sorts of strange noises that are meant to be the sound of his magical armour being put on or his amulet activating. Sometimes he activates mine too and I have to make the weird noises as well.

We get to the beach and I quickly strip, desperate to get in the sea and far, far away. He stays on the beach as it’s too cold for him to swim, the intended result being he can’t be right next to me jabbering away. Peace at last, I think. Hallelujah.

Oh, no. I am wrong about that too. He runs along the beach keeping up with me while shouting things to me and making strange gestures that I think have something to do with imbuing his armour with power from the sea. Is there no escape? I look over longingly to the Isle of Wight and wonder whether I can make it.

Finally I swim back to my clothes and he is waiting right where the waves crash on the shore. By this point I am so cold that I can’t make sense of what he is saying let alone attempt to play along. My silence doesn’t phase him though, he just keeps on going, standing in front of me between me and my clothes as he fills me in on all I have missed. Our dragons have now grown and soon we will be able to fly them. Goodie.

Luckily, I have now discovered the wonders of lacing my tea with whiskey. It really does take the edge of everything. A most fabulous discovery. And for the briefest of moment all seems right in the world. Until we have to head back to our prison to finish his schoolwork in time to send it in to the teacher.

Whoever thought this Google classrooms business was a good idea is having a fucking laugh. How on earth do they expect children to want to learn by sitting in front of a computer all day watching boring videos? Seriously? Since when was that ever going to be a good idea?

Also, it is absolutely and unequivocally impossible for him to do the work without me sitting next to him. Impossible. Which means I can’t work until he has gone to bed by which time I am a drunken zombie. I slap my computer keyboard for an hour and write something absurd then give up and spend two hours mindlessly scrolling through Facebook watch. Either that or looking up homes I can’t afford on rightmove. I can dream, right?

I do try sometimes to go to my office upstairs during the day and catch up on some much-needed writing but it is a disaster. Every two minutes he comes in to ask me a question or tell me something ridiculously banal and I lose my train of thought and end up on twitter writing nonsense. Is it time for some wine yet?

I know that good communication is important so rather than fly off the handle I use my words to express to him how I need to have some quiet time in the day and that I would appreciate it if he could stop talking just for a little bit, just so I can get some work done.

“Why?” is always the immediate comeback. I calmly explain again, but inside I am already beginning to scream.

“But I like to talk, you know me” is the next comeback.

Not wanting to crush him by telling him his personality sucks I grimace and explain how yes, I understand but it is important to also be sensitive to the needs of the people around him.

I can tell that one has gone right over his head. His eyes glaze over in confusion. In his world everyone should, quite rightly, be continuously fascinated by everything he has to say. Just being in his exalted presence and applauding his every utterance should be our highest aspiration in life, as should serving him. As far as he is concerned he is being sensitive to our needs, we need his presence like plants need sunlight.

Not for the first time do I thoroughly believe he must be a reincarnation of Louis XIV. I have also just read that when Louis was a baby he was called Louis Dieudonné by his parents, which means Louis the God-Given. Eli means from On High in Hebrew. Oh God, what have I done? It is true after all, I have birthed a monster.

I slam the things I am drying a little too forcefully on the kitchen island and I think he begins to understand I am getting very frustrated. He raises his eyebrows and continues clearing the table. There is about 10 seconds of silence before he starts humming the Sound of Music very loudly and then breaks into full blown song.

I look at him pointedly.

“What?” he says, “I’m not talking.”

I throw the teatowel on the island and slump off, defeated.

“What mummy?” he says trotting behind me.

I go into the bathroom and shut the door.

“I love the Sound of Music, it’s so good, isn’t it mummy?” he says through the door. Pause. “I especially like that bit when he doesn’t realise they are all his children climbing in the trees, don’t you? Don’t you mummy?”

“I’m on the loo” I say, silently banging my head on the wall. I’m not but where else can I go? I go to the loo a lot these days. Silence.

“Can I play on my tablet?” Comes the final word.

Since when did we decide bringing up our own children is a good idea? Why, oh why did we get rid of nanny and the nursery? A quick visitation after breakfast followed by a strictly observed hour at teatime is quite enough parenting. The Victorians were on to something. And the whole ‘children should be seen and not heard’? Genius.

All this woke pandering to people’s feelings and not wanting to suppress and mould children but let them flourish into whomever they want to be is utter poppycock (great word). Forget about suppressing, children should be crushed and rebuilt again in our image.

I don’t know what I will become if this has to go on until March. Perhaps I will end up like the village mad woman of old. The one who lives in the forest on the periphery of the village peddling charms, scaring children and eating rats.

These days are dark, the world’s gone crazy, the apocalypse is here and all I can ask is, are we nearly there yet?

And then thank God for whiskey and wine.

Disclaimer: this is mildly satirical and rather exaggerated, in case you were worried for my child’s well-being. We have our moments but actually do get along very well. I call him my gift from God. I also rarely drink, although have gained a new found appreciation for it.