A Promise

 When my marriage ended,
Legal professionals took thirteen years,
Of memories, love and hopes,
And they turned it into a figure,
In pounds sterling.

So I took that money,
And I bought a house.
Now I will fill that house,
With memories, love and hopes.

 

 

Insanity Week

 I need to stop referring to what I'm doing, in-self deprecatory fashion, as a "training course." It's a postgraduate degree, and it's a lot of hard work that is not made one jot easier by pandemic limitations.

The pandemic meant I was late starting my first placement in a nursery, so that the first week ended up being the same week our first written assignment was due. Said written assignment is supposed to be reflecting on how I've implemented what I've learned so far in my work with children. It's not meant to be done after just a few days of working.

So I knew I was in for a tough week... and then at lunchtime on Monday, I got a call to go and pick up my son as somebody in his school bus bubble had tested positive for Covid. He had to self-isolate for two weeks.

That was how the school told me. My son got the news when a teacher entered his computer class and told him to gather all his things and leave immediately. "No time to explain." I suppose her thought was not to mention Covid in front of the whole class. My son's thought was that I had died or something similarly cataclysmic.

Anyway, according to current British rules, the rest of the household did not have to self-isolate unless my son developed symptoms, so I was faced with the dilemma of whether to leave him home alone for eight hours a day or to delay my placement for another two weeks—not impossible, but it would make it harder for me to complete the course.

Then on Tuesday, there was a positive test at my placement and the majority of children and staff had to self-isolate.

When the dust settled, I'd had discussions with all parties and arranged that I would stagger my day against my daughter's school day. From Wednesday: 

• I walked my daughter to school in the morning, then I spent a couple of hours at home—in theory, keeping my son company, but in practice hogging the laptop as I worked furiously on my assignment. 
• Mid-morning, I'd get my son to help me prepare dinner partway and instruct him on how to cook it, before leaving for work. Ostensibly, he could now use the laptop for his school work; actually, I'm pretty sure it was more like 15 minutes checking in on school stuff and then five hours of terrible video games.
• I'd spend my work day with three other staff and a handful of children, constantly looking for ways anything I did might be relevant for my assignment.
  
• My daughter would get picked up from school by her friend's dad who would drop her off at home. Both kids then got to enjoy quality sibling time / unfettered screen-time until I got home.
  
• It was only Thursday that I had to call ahead and tell them to get dinner on, in the end. Wednesday and Friday I made dinner, but that was the only nod to domestic duties before I went back to writing.
  

Nothing else got done. I spoke to nobody. I didn't do housework. My brain was completely taken up with coursework, insomnia kicked in... but we had a couple of wins: 

1. I got my assignment submitted whole hours before the deadline of midnight on Friday. I'm highly dubious as to whether it'll pass muster, but the people marking it know my situation, so I'm not going to get kicked off the course either.
2. I got home Thursday evening to find dinner (fajitas) on the table. The chicken was cooked perfectly, the tortilla wraps were warm, and everything was dished up waiting for me. The kids got bonus pocket money this week for that.

Anyway, I spent most of Saturday in a daze... I snapped out of it briefly at 2pm and did some laundry, and then sank back on the sofa again. Slept like a log last night, so today, I met up with the boyfriend for a quick walk, despite the wind and the rain. The kids were allowed a duvet day.

This is, I hope, as hard as it's going to get. I've got a long way to go on the course, but from this point on, I'll have more direct experience to draw on. Not to mention, the kids and I have figured out some of the balancing act between my work needs and their school needs, which will make life easier going forward. 

My son hasn't displayed any symptoms, so we're optimistic that he hasn't been infected—as of Friday, his entire year bubble has to self-isolate now, which extends his home-learning by a day. The first wave didn't really take hold in the south-west, but this second wave is hitting us harder. I still hope this week was the hardest we'll have, but it won't be the last time we have to improvise.

Passing The Test

Haven't posted mostly because I've been snowed under with coursework, and any time leftover was focused on the kids and their schools. Now, England is about to go into another lockdown... but that's not what prompted this post. No, this post is about how I passed my driving test on Friday.

Too Late for a Spoiler Alert, Huh?

It was third time lucky... I failed one at the end of September and another in the middle of October.  The first time wasn't too bad. I actually drove perfectly competently for 40 minutes, and then right at the end I was asked to reverse park at the test centre, I let myself get flustered and forgot to check my mirrors before starting backwards.

That was a classic mistake of mine, so while I was annoyed at myself, I was actually heartened that I had kept calm and relaxed for the bulk of the test. I just had to watch it when I did get nervous, remember to take a moment and bring it back. I could do this. 

Then I took the second test, and five minutes into it, I approached a roundabout in the left lane when I was turning right. That's a major fault, automatic fail, and we went straight back to the test centre... but the worst thing was I didn't even notice I'd done it. It took me awhile to realise we were going back to the test centre, and I knew I must have failed then, but I couldn't figure out what I'd done.

That took a severe hit on my nerves. If I could make a mistake that I never normally made and have no idea, how would I ever pass this?

Fortunately, everything held together the third time. It was raining and traffic was heavier than usual, as everybody drove back north from their half-term holiday, but I held my nerve. For the most part, the traffic worked in my favour, as I had to keep stopping and waiting for people.

The manoeuvre is always the danger zone for me, the point when I'm going to get stressed and forget my mirrors as I did on the first test. This time, I was asked to do the easiest one, pulling over on the right and reversing two car-lengths. When I finished that and we carried on with the independent drive, I knew that the most likely outcome was now a pass.... I just had to finish without that roundabout moment. 

It wasn't a roundabout that nearly did me in; it was my mask. 

A Pandemic driving test involves wearing a mask and driving with the windows open, even on as wet a day as this was. (And that's after the examiner hands you a wipe to disinfect the steering wheel, gear-stick and handbrake.) As we headed towards the A30, I felt a tickle in my throat which I now have to assume must have been a fibre from my mask. The first couple of coughs were an embarrassment, and I nervously assured the examiner (who never commented) that it was just something in my throat rather than a sign of illness.

For most of Devon and Cornwall, the A30 functions like a motorway: there's no stopping, and you merge onto it from a sliproad at 70mph. As I entered the sliproad, I realised the cough was persisting and this was about to be a really bad idea. I merged into the traffic, while the cough grew steadily more violent and tears started streaming from my eyes.

Knowing we wouldn't be on the A30 for more than a minute or two before exiting again, I tried to ask the examiner if I could pull over and take a drink after we came off. He couldn't understand me through the coughing and thought I was asking to pull over now. I managed to get across my actual intent, but I was seriously worried that I wouldn't be able to see in a few more seconds, at which point I would have no choice but to put my hazard lights on and stop on the hard shoulder.

Thankfully, I did not get to find out whether or not this would have failed me. I made it to the exit ramp and whatever was in my throat cleared as I went down it. The examiner checked if we needed to make a detour so I could stop, but I told him it was fine and we continued back to the test centre. I half-expected him to leap out of the car and away from my symptomatic self as soon as we stopped, but he calmly stayed seated. The minute between the test ending and "I'm pleased to tell you you have passed," was possibly the longest minute of my life.

 A Weight Lifted

 It's hard to explain the impact of that moment when I passed. In many ways, this test has been twenty years in the making, since I started lessons in 2000. The driving test was always the part of moving back to the UK I was most scared of... I've dreaded it for years, finding it hard to believe that I was actually capable of it, even after a decade of driving experience in the US.

Successfully driving over here, before my US licence expired, gave me a confidence for it which evaporated almost completely after the second time I failed. I began to wonder if I had been reckless in bringing the family to Cornwall instead of somewhere where reliance on public transport would have been a more viable option.

• Not being able to drive was impairing the kids' lives, preventing us from doing so much. We relied on my boyfriend aka our support bubble for proper outings or we'd have to squeeze into the back of my parents' car with our masks on. I always dreaded a situation where my son would need to come home from school early, because I wouldn't be able to pick him up.
  
• After my second failure, I had to turn down a school that was willing to take me on placement as a trainee because I couldn't get to them by bus.
• We're still waiting for a date on the house, but we couldn't have moved, because I wouldn't have been able to get my daughter to school. I was bracing for a situation where we carried on renting while our house stood empty.
  
• In order for me to practice driving, my parents had to drive half an hour to my place, mask up to sit in the car with me as I drove around for an hour plus and then drive half an hour back to their home.
• Errands either had to wait for a day when my boyfriend / support bubble was visiting, or I'd have to haul my parents out again. Some things just got put off indefinitely in hope of passing my test.
• I was never certain of when I could retake a test... Both times I failed, I had to rebook for months down the line and then check the website every couple of days for any earlier slots to come up while dreading the possibility of everything being closed again (or one of us coming down with Covid symptoms within two weeks of a test.) Luckily, my local centre has been assiduous in opening up new slots whenever they could—probably fearing another backlog in lockdown.
  

I felt I was letting everybody down, I felt trapped into this dependency on others instead of being able to forge my own life. I was terrified of another lockdown coming, removing the possibility of even taking the test and limiting further the help available to me.

I owe a lot to the tireless support of my boyfriend through this time. Instead of meeting me halfway for a just-the-two-of-us exploration of some wild spot in Dartmoor, he was driving all the way here to take the whole family out. He was the one who took me to all of my tests. He gamely sit outside the test centre in his waterproofs while I drove, then afterwards, we'd go to Tesco and buy their largest Toblerone. (It was never Driving Test Day but always Toblerone Day.) This week, he got roped into a two-day family road trip during a severe storm just so that I could give the kids something resembling a holiday.

 

Yes, everything was closed, but we were going to enjoy the beauty of the far south, dammit.

My boyfriend is doing an online course of his own and will be moving North for the practical element of that in the new year. I had started to get genuinely scared of how I was going to manage without him... The past few months would have been survivable without him, but they'd have taken a significant toll to our mental health. Now, thankfully, I don't need him, and I can let him go to the rest of his life without a qualm. I'll miss him a great deal, of course, and I'll always be grateful for what he did for us this year.

Still, here and now, my little family is going into lockdown with a new sense of freedom. I can drive again, and that means we can move, I can progress my career... everything we really need is open to us. As uncertain as the future is, this whole Life Reboot thing is working out.

First Day of School

 My son's first day of secondary school was on Friday. (I got a big spot on my nose in what I assume was maternal sympathy.) The big milestone for us is that he's now responsible for getting himself to and from school. No school run for me!

He was adamant that he didn't want me accompanying him to the bus-stop, but they were starting late that first day, so I over-ruled him. He wouldn't be taking the usual bus, and I was afraid his bus pass wouldn't be accepted. As it was only year 7s and 12s going in, I was fairly confident that there wouldn't be any other pupils at the bus stop to see his maternal shame.

Just as well I went, as the usual bus was late. Eventually a completely different local bus turned up, one that doesn't normally come through our village. I talked to the driver who agreed to stop at the school and accept the bus pass. We waved my son off, and I proceeded to be wildly anxious. 

I sent a hasty email to the school explaining that he might show up late, and he sent us a gloomy text from the bus but didn't respond to my later texts. I took this to mean he had made it into school (where phones must be switched off) and fought against the urge to helicopter-parent the hell out of the school phoneline. Thankfully, in due course, somebody replied to my email saying he'd arrived and was with the rest of his form.

As per his wishes, we didn't meet him at the bus stop at the end of the day. Instead, he called us on his walk home so that I could put the kettle on. And then again, to let us know that he was having to wait for cattle being herded in the road. At that point, my daughter charged out both to meet him and to see the herding. They came home, as complacent and satisfied with themselves as you'd expect from pre-adolescents, and we all had a cup of tea.

Tomorrow my daughter starts back as well. My son will walk down to the bus stop bright and early, and she and I will do the shorter walk to the village school by ourselves, which will be odd. Even odder when I collect her in the afternoon, and we have to wait almost an hour for him to get home. Another new routine for me to devise and the kids to groan about!

Along with back to school stress, we've managed to get a last gasp of summer holiday this week. I gave the kids their first experience of rowing on Tuesday, and then my boyfriend took us to an indoor rock-climbing gym on Wednesday. Today, we took Granny (and Grandad and the dog) out for a coastal lunch for her birthday.

Life has felt pretty good this week... At some point soon, I'm going to go back to student-hood, as well as the kids, but I'm determined to keep up the adventure side of things.

Must be harvest-time

So after a chaotic few weeks of slogging through administrative treacle, things are suddenly coming together.


1. Driving Test Booked

Firstly, I finally got granted an emergency driving test... for the end of September. Having to wait another month is crushing—not least because jobs have been popping up that I can't apply for—but at least I know instead of vainly hoping. Now I'm just dealing with the stress what-ifs of failure or a return to lockdown.

It's still embarrassing having to explain to various people that I can't drive at the moment. Everybody is too polite to ask, but I know the obvious assumption is that I have had my licence revoked. It was amusing when it was just my neighbours seeing the L plates, but when I'm talking to somebody in a more professional capacity, I don't want them assuming I'm a reckless driver! It's very awkward explaining the US licence though, since that requires further backstory. I'm still working on a nice pithy wording for that.

2. Back on the drugs

After a last minute hiccup of losing my prescription, the pharmacy managed to produce some ADD medication for me this week. A few days in, and I've got killer insomnia while my productivity's through the roof. I expect this initial dramatic effect to wear off, but it's pretty weird right now. Instead of being drowsy and having to push myself through the to-do list, I'm restless and keep finding more stuff to do. 

It's not a magic bullet, so I still can't multi-task, and I keep forbidding the children from talking to me while I'm on task, but I can stay on task without my brain fogging over after half an hour. Meanwhile, I'm averaging about four hours of sleep a night and my eyes are burning holes in my head, but I'm not yawning and nodding off throughout the day. Nights are hit and miss: I'm only sleeping a few hours at a time and then struggling to get back to sleep, so I'm firmly routining my body clock and hoping that will settle. I've got a follow up call from my doctor in two weeks to decide how it's going.

3. Return of the Course

Out of the blue, on Friday, I had a phone call from the early years training course I'd applied to, chasing up some outstanding documentation. The following day, they offered me a place for September conditional on the receipt of my last reference. As I had given up hope of that, this is incredible news. I'm a little concerned about how it will go due to the last-minute-ness of it all, but in these pandemic-times, that's going to be a recurring theme. It's a full-time (funded) course though, so I won't be working much if at all this year. As it turns out, it's probably just as well I couldn't apply for any jobs.

Despite the vagueness, I'm really, really happy about this. I'd been feeling very down about my complete failure to progress with the career stuff, but this is a definite progression. Not only do I get a vital qualification, but I'll be placed with different schools throughout the course, which will give me the local contacts I've been missing and, with any luck, might lead to a job offer for 2021. When I moved to the UK, I had a five year goal of achieving a steady job at a particular salary level. I feel like I'm on track for that now.

4. Et Cetera

Meanwhile, all the other variations on life are ticking over... like back to school stuff, particularly my son's switch to secondary school, for which the guidance keeps changing. But we've got a full set of school uniform now, he's got a bus pass and the information for the bus service laid on for this stage of lockdown, and since the government's last minute switch on facemask advice, I've got ten extra washable facemasks thanks to Amazon Prime. (He's required to have one for the bus and one for school every day.)

The house is pootling along at a quieter pace. I've had all the information on it to read through—including a wonderfully old-fashioned document from 1949, when it was converted from one detached property to two semi-detached. I'm told all the agreements in that document still apply, so I'm making careful note of my right to install a pipe in my neighbour's well (so long as it is not lower than his pipe).

The main issue with the house is that the surveyors are all over-booked. I had one surveyor cancel on me this week "due to unforeseen circumstances" which is useful cover for all eventualities from "somebody died" to "we made a mistake we don't want to admit to." Luckily, I was able to get another one, but as they won't be able to survey the house before October, I really hope they don't find anything.

The sellers still haven't found a house, and as they'll have the same issue with surveyors as I've had, I now think it's unlikely we'll move before Christmas.

And I haven't even mentioned dentist appointments, a car insurance issue (that turned out to be a glitch on their end)... Thank goodness for the bank holiday weekend! Despite the sunshine, we haven't really done anything with it, and I've spent a lot of time on the laptop. But it meant a three day break from phone calls and emails. 

 I think I'm caught up again.... We'll see what happens on Tuesday.

ADD progression

The children's father has finally managed to get to England through all the pandemic insanity, so they've gone off with him for ten days. Against my expectations, he was able to get an exemption from quarantine... which I honestly find deeply unsettling, since everything I read on the government's own website indicated this would not be the case. We were prepared for a situation where he came to the UK, spent two weeks quarantining with the children and then went home again. I don't know quite why he was given more freedom, but it makes you wonder who else the regulations were waived for.

At any rate, he's been left to his own precaution regime, and it's still going to be a weird and isolated break for the kids, but they get to see their father for the first time since February and they get a break from the four walls of our flat.

I admit, I'm a little bit concerned about what I'm going to do with myself without human company for much of this ten days, but it's the first time since March that I've got a break from being Mum, that I've been alone in the house.... It's hot and sticky today with rumblings of thunder, so the first thing I did once they left was to strip down to my underwear and watch the documentary, "Howard", on Disney+. Nobody to whine about their turn on the TV or to be mortified at how much of my legs I'm showing!

(After such slovenly beginnings, I promise that I have put my shorts back on and am writing this to move towards productivity... or I'm procrastinating on putting the laundry away. One of the two!)

A Video Call

Before all the worry over how the kids' trip was going to work, I was intending to post about developments in my ADD diagnosis. The previous post, about my brain and its ruminating, was supposed to act as context.

Right before lockdown started, I had made it to the top of the waiting list for an appointment with an adult ADHD clinic. At the end of July, I had that appointment via video call with a consultant. I wasn't warned that the call would be two hours long. A little too ironic... I did wonder if I had failed the assessment because I lasted the full two hours!

It was definitely a far cry from my American diagnosis, where I filled out a single-sided questionnaire. On that basis, my GP in the States merrily started me on medication a week later. (We had great insurance in the States, so nobody was deliberately cutting corners on my healthcare.)

Doing this on the NHS in England has been a much longer wait, but it's also been more thoroughly done. They asked to see my old questionnaire for reference, but I filled out their standard one (multiple pages), and my mother had to fill out another one (slightly fewer pages) based on her memories of me as a child. In July's video call, I talked to a full psychiatrist who referred back to these questionnaires frequently. (I think it was November when I filled them out, so I couldn't remember what was in them!)

The key thing the doctor brought up is that you would typically expect ADHD / ADD distractions to be external, but mine were internal. He theorised that the ruminating might simply be due to depression/anxiety, but as my symptoms pre-date the end of my marriage, I think ADD is exacerbating my depression rather than the other way around.

While I didn't put it that succinctly in the call, I was very proud of myself—and relieved—for managing to stand my ground on that point, and not let my brain get confused by the new line of argument. We did discuss other options, such as the possibility that I'm on the autism spectrum, which I do think is entirely likely, but I was firm that my priority was addressing the attention issues.

At any rate, the doctor believed my statements that this were affecting my life and was a concern when I was driving. He logged off, saying he would need to review his notes to be sure I met sufficient criteria for a diagnosis, and I went and collapsed on the sofa for the afternoon.

A few days later, a letter to my GP was cc'ed to me via email, summarising the call in frighteningly thorough detail (right down to what I was wearing and where I was taking the call!). I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive subtype (and social anxiety).

The benefit from my US diagnosis here is that I have already tried a couple of different medications and was able to report their effects to the doctor. While I thought that the one I was using wasn't legal in the UK, it sounds like they can prescribe that for me, especially in the knowledge that I didn't have any side effects. The next step was a cardiac assessment by my GP, which I had on Tuesday, just to tick the right boxes before they prescribe me anything.

Fingers crossed, I'll be on medication again by the time the kids are home. Lockdown doesn't really require a lot of focus, but the ruminating mind isn't helping the emotional state.

The storms never broke, but clouds and showers have passed steadily across the sky and the temperature has dropped to something much more bearable. Time to go through the dutiful motions of adulthood: tidying up the laundry and eating leftovers for dinner...

Losing my Writing

I don't write as much as I used to. I miss it, and that's why I make the effort to keep up this blog, recording my progress in Life, but I don't write anything else anymore. I'll still get an idea for something I want to write, and I'll tell myself that when I'm at a loose end, I'll write it... but I never get the compulsion anymore.  Instead my brain goes back to the things I don't want to write about, the things I'm trying to distract myself from.

Life with My Brain

Ever since I was a child, my brain has enjoyed words. It would fixate on things, and words were a way of articulating the obsession. My brain ruminates, thinking repetitively and often unproductively—at absent moments, the same sentence can recur to mind for years at a time, like an in-media-res first line of a story. It's nothing profound or clever. Take a preadolescent example: "She screamed." This was simply the trigger for a pleasingly dramatic imagining of why she screamed. What led her to the traumatic situation? How did she escape? The general events remained the same each time, as I fine-tuned the dialogue and struggled to achieve a satisfying ending (always the most elusive part of the process).

As a child, I built fantasy worlds and dreamed up epic stories that I kept in my head. As an adult, I learned to touch-type and discovered the joys of writing out and sharing my feverish thinkings, both fiction and philosophy. (Unlike many writers, I don't enjoy writing by hand... I'm slow, awkward and ultimately self-conscious with a pen.) 

For my entire adult life, my primary hobby has been writing to the internet, I'd gleefully delve into the minutia of a TV show or book series with likeminded fans. I'd write longform (very longform!) pieces on whatever I was currently passionate about. I'd collaborate with other writers, indulgently sparking off each other. I'd record my life, for friends, family and my own memories.

Often, this worked to get the words out of my brain. It didn't necessarily make it any more productive as it would just switch to a new rumination, but it gave me satisfaction that I'd expressed my feelings.

The Dark Side of Rumination

Psychologically speaking, rumination is often a consequence of depression and anxiety, where you will worry about something you can't change over and over again. When I did a cognitive behavioural therapy course at the beginning of the year, that taught us to distinguish between productive worry (when you can address and solve a problem) and rumination (when you can only dwell on what's wrong). We learned coping mechanisms to distract us from the rumination and push through it.

My life has generally been very sheltered so my rumination was almost never on bad things. Even when I went through difficult periods, my brain was at least as likely to ruminate on more pleasant fantasies or trivia. I could sit at my laptop, writing my obsessions and escape the worries of the real world for a little while.

It was only when my marriage ended that my brain fixated on the source of my depression and anxiety. For over two years, absent moments have triggered thoughts of him, what-if memories, anger at others and loathing of myself. True to the habits of a lifetime, I've tried to write the ruminations out of my head, but everything's failed. I've kept a private journal for myself, I've poured my heart out on this blog and I've cried on the virtual shoulders of friends. That gave me some satisfaction for six months or so, but I became disillusioned as I grew aware that neither my feelings nor the situation were changing. 

I stopped writing, and the feelings bottled up instead, until I had to vent either to friends, or on here, or—far worse—in desperate emails to him that were met with either silence or mortifyingly short and trite responses.

I still have to vent occasionally, but I'm getting better at distraction. It keeps me out of depression holes and allows me to function relatively normally. I've started to view myself as a happy person again. But distraction also doesn't change the situation or my feelings about it, so that's still what my brain returns to.

Death of an Author

That's why I can't write, and it's also why (or perhaps one reason why) I never quite feel like myself anymore. I've lost a few associated habits too. For example, I always enjoyed doing jigsaw puzzles which helped focus my mind in its ruminations and work through writer's block. Doing a jigsaw puzzle now is liable to put me in a funk.

I'm not quite sure if I need to redefine who I am or wait until something finally takes my brain to a different track. Either way, the right path is to carry on going through the motions of Self-Care and Progress. They have a real effect, even if my motivation is sometimes forced.

There are days when I don't care. I just miss writing,

Bad News and Hopes

Along with the good news in my life, there's bad—or at least, worrisome. A global pandemic does rather shift the relative view of 'bad news'.

Driving Delays

After passing my theory test, I got back in touch with my driving instructor to prepare for my practical. Those tests were due to reopen on 22nd July, so I was hopeful that I could take one within a few weeks. But that date came and went, and the website wouldn't allow me to book a test, saying first priority went to those who had had their tests cancelled.

I talked to my instructor about it, and he told me that there was a backlog of 210,000 tests nationwide that had been cancelled during lockdown. While tests had reopened, not all examiners were back at work, due to shielding, childcare, etc. I had assumed that it would work like the theory test, but I hadn't given thought to how the practical test was inherently more difficult to safeguard against covid.

(For those wondering what pandemic driving lessons look like: I'm learning in my own car, so my instructor and I have to both wear masks, and I have to deep-clean the car beforehand. This is doing wonders for my car interior which had not seen a vacuum cleaner since I bought it.)

Only a third of the cancelled tests have been rescheduled so far, and my instructor's best guess for when I might get a test was September / October.

I had never seriously considered that I might not be able to drive for months. That I might not be able to drive by the time the kids go back to school, i.e. when I can go back to work. That I might not be able to drive when we close on the house...

The effect of this is to write off our summer. We can't really go anywhere, so we're basically stuck in the house for the next five weeks, going to Bude once or twice a week. I'm going to have to analyse the bus timetables and see if I can work out a daytrip somewhere else, using connecting buses.

I'm worried about how we can manage the move without the car. I'd like to move a lot of our stuff myself, but we can probably work around that. What will be more difficult is getting my daughter to school every day. She's too young to ride the bus independently, and if I escort her in, I'm likely to find myself waiting an hour for the bus back. The same goes for picking her up at the end of the day. This would make it all but impossible for me to work as well.

My best option is to find somebody she can carpool with or we might end up with a situation where we buy a house, but have to stay in our rented place until I've passed my test. Suffice to say, I'm now hoping for some delays before we can close.

Something to Pin Hope On

That's worst case scenario. Well, no. Actually, worst case scenario is that I have a bad day, fail my test, and can't get another one scheduled for months. But best case scenario is that I can get an emergency test as a critical worker. I was rejected for one earlier in lockdown because the focus was on people in healthcare. These days, there's a lot more attention on the school issue and getting the schools ready for September.

The guidelines for schools are that children can't move across bubbles but adults can. So when I had a job interview recently, one of the available positions was working in a year 5 bubble in the morning and an early years bubble in the afternoon. Let's say someone in the year 5 bubble tests positive for covid: I would have to stay home (along with everybody else in the bubble), and the school would have to find somebody to cover in the early years bubble.

In other words, supply teachers are going to be needed. I'll have to wait and see if the government is already thinking along those lines.

I never heard back from that job interview, which makes me pessimistic. I don't think I did well: there was a moment when they asked what strengths I brought to Early Years Education, the most obvious of questions and one I know how to answer—and my brain just couldn't shift gears from the Special Needs conversation we'd been having before that. I'm pretty sure my reply was vague and generic.

On the other hand, I have a habit of remembering myself as being more inarticulate than I actually was, and my CV covers that very question, so maybe that's just paranoia. But equally, I haven't been able to get hold of the online course I was supposed to be taking, and I have nothing lined up for September. It seems I'm no further ahead than I was this time last year.

Random fun fact: a Montessori school advertised for a nursery assistant. The exact job I was hoping to find. But they're too far away. I'd need to move to a different part of the county, the local school isn't great—and I'd need to be able to drive.

It's one of those things where the vision doesn't work with the reality. It's bittersweet... yet I don't mind too much. The kids like it here, and I like the life I can give them here. I like the life I'm giving myself here.

So, yeah. I need to rethink the employment thing. I can carry on as supply, and I can probably get more regular work than last year if I stop holding out for early years. Maybe it's time to stop worrying so much about reaching the career goals I was working towards before my entire life changed. To be more open to the opportunities that are coming up in my new life.

Most importantly, my cats are still cute.

Eventful Times

Last weekend was eventful! (Is that why it's taken me a week to recover enough to write about it?)

On Saturday, we went to see a house. There are, of course, pandemic rules for house viewings:

• Only two people; no children.
• Only fifteen minutes.
• Masks and gloves must be worn; no touching anything. (The agent was permitted to open cupboards, turn on taps, etc.)

I took my mother, because if you can count on her for one thing, it's to find what's wrong with something. I wiped down my passenger seat and she masked up to ride with me. The children gave me orders to do a video walkthrough so they could see everything.

In short, the house was lovely. I really want a spare room so people can come and stay with us, but I'm trying to buy a four bedroom house on a three bedroom house budget. This house was far and away the best I've seen—its price brought down by a less desirable location but one that's convenient for us.

Because of the stamp duty holiday, we were buying in a competitive market, so I offered the asking price for the house as quickly as possible—the only thing I negotiated on was asking them to leave the cooker. It's possible the sellers would have sold it for less, but I would rather pay more than I strictly needed to than risk losing the house because somebody else offered the asking price.

Somebody else did offer the asking price, which led to a fairly frantic Sunday of me proving my finances to the agents in every way I could think of. The kids' Dad even emailed them for me. I have to say, as much as I struggle with our estranged relationship, I'm inexpressibly grateful that I can count on him for this sort of support.

Fortunately, while the other buyer was in a better position than I was, they wanted the house for a second home, and the sellers preferred to sell to somebody local. Once they were satisfied I could definitely afford the house, they accepted us, as announced thus by the estate agent:

"Well, the bad news is... that you've got to pack everything up in a few months!"

I could have cheerfully killed him for that, but as there's a big gap between accepting an offer and exchanging contracts, I refrained from homicide. One in three house sales falls through after this point, so we're touching wood while the seller looks for a property of their own and while my conveyancer checks that there are no hidden issues with the sale.

But for Sunday night, we could celebrate our own news, although the stress didn't end there. My brother and his wife were supposed to be having a baby on Sunday or Monday, but it wasn't until Tuesday night that they brought their son into the world. They're still all the way in the States, so I don't know when I'll get to hold my new and ridiculously cute nephew, but I'm officially an aunt again!

Celebrations all round! And a much needed pick-me-up for the start of a summer holiday where I wasn't sure what we would be doing. Now, we've got a project to focus on. After the transatlantic move last year, this move of five miles down the road seems like a fun little time-killer—and when the stress hits, we have a steady influx of adorable baby pictures and videos to coo over.

One Step Forward in Going Nowhere

At long last, I had a theory test that did not get cancelled!

I passed it on Tuesday and was gratified to get a perfect score in the multiple choice portion. After three months of rescheduling, I would have had no excuse for anything less than 100%, but it felt like a delightfully petty victory against... The Man. Or something.

Tuesday was also the day my boyfriend officially became our support bubble as he'd been away in Bristol for a couple of weeks. The test was in Barnstaple, an hour's drive away, which posed a number of logistical difficulties.

• How to get there? My boyfriend gamely did the hour's drive down from Exeter first thing in the morning, but he left his car at the flat and I drove us to Barnstaple under the badge of my newly acquired L plates. (I'd love to know what the neighbours have made of those.)
  
• Would I be back in time to pick up my son from school? My son was having a leaver's fun week at school including a sleepover, Tuesday night. We marched him to school that morning with assorted changes of clothing, a bicycle, sleeping bag and two packed lunches... and thus dumped him for thirty hours.
  
• What would I do with my daughter while taking the test? Under pandemic rules, only candidates are allowed in the test centre. In fact, there was only one seat available in the waiting area, and I had to stand outside for ten minutes before I could go in. I don't know what would have happened if I'd taken the test six weeks ago and shown up with both kids and no responsible adult to watch them; instead my boyfriend was thrust into the intimidating role of babysitter for a nine year old girl. She had her school work with her, so they spent twenty minutes learning about Lord Shaftesbury and the child labour act in the car. After that, they found a cafe by the car park and got cake.
• Face masks required. This wasn't really a hurdle at all, as Mum has already made us two masks each, but I had to wear a mask the entire time I was inside the testing centre. I was only asked to remove it briefly to confirm my identity (and to prove I hadn't somehow concealed a phone or highway code inside it.) Most of the computer booths were taped off too, so I would sit two metres apart from other takers, and although I was assured that everything was wiped down between candidates, disposable wipes were left at each console if anybody wished to use them.

My test was at 11 and by 12, I had rejoined the others in a cafe where they had kindly saved me some cake. We now had an afternoon free of obligation ahead of us, and—no offence to that fair town—we had no desire to spend it in Barnstaple.

Instead, we spent the afternoon exploring Welcombe Mouth on the north end of Devon-Cornwall border. The road down to the car park is an adventure in itself: it gives up on being a road altogether for the last 20 yard stretch, instead becoming a series of rocky steps... but we made it, and considered it well worth the car's suspension!

Exploring rocks and sea

The northernmost bridge between Devon and Cornwall

Marsland Valley flowers

Ronald Duncan's Writing Hut

Scrambling around the waterfall at Welcombe Mouth

Sitting on the stepstones just upstream.

This bore out my decision to go with my boyfriend for our support bubble. Obviously, picking my boyfriend has some personal benefits for me, but I had debated choosing another family instead, so we could all have friends our own age to hang out with. However, with the driving issues, what we most needed was somebody in the car with us, so bubbling with one individual made more sense.

Then again, with my boyfriend in Exeter, I worried that it would be more practical to find somebody in the village. But what a waste of a support bubble to make it somebody who we barely knew! We wanted somebody we could adventure with, somebody we could hug! This day out at a beach was far more valuable than any errand.

Not that we didn't do errands! We returned via Bude, dumping some cardboard at the recycling centre and then doing a drive-by for a house that had just come on the market. With a Stamp Duty (land tax) holiday in effect, I'm now looking at houses in earnest. Of course, so is everybody else... After checking out the area, I contacted the agent to view the house and discovered it had already gone under offer.

That's probably going to be my focus for the next few weeks: watching the property market like a hawk. I've spent much of the weekend preparing a moving plan, making sure I know what needs doing and how much it will cost, so that I don't need to waste time when I find something I want to make an offer on.

That and getting ready to take my practical test. Practical tests won't reopen until next week, with priority given to those who had their tests cancelled at the start of lockdown. I need some more lessons too, and those will also start next week. It might be optimistic, but I'm hoping I can pass by the end of July... I really don't want to waste the entirety of the summer holiday without a car.

It does nothing for my brain either, knowing every day is going to be the same as the last. Tuesday was the last day I really felt alert. Since then, I've found myself lethargic... If I sit down to do anything, I get drowsy and if I do something standing up, I can't focus and end up staring into space. I need concrete goals to work towards: another driving test and a house would be stressful, but they'd also be definite steps forward.

The Bus: A Cautionary Tale

The end of last week was a bit traumatic. Mostly because we have a16 year old cat with a heart murmur who rarely leaves the garden and he disappeared. After 24 hours, we presumed him dead, we grieved, it was a whole process... and after 48 hours he turned up at the back door as if nothing had happened.

But the second most traumatic thing to happen last week featured a bus.

Just to review: I can't drive! So I was determined to catch a bus into Bude last week as a trial run. I know myself, and the longer I put something off, the more it becomes a Big Deal. If I didn't go the first week, I'd never get up the nerve to do it. The bus stop in Bude is a stone's throw from the beach which gave us the perfect excuse to go.

I'd downloaded the app, checked the timetable and I knew we could arrive in town at 12:15pm and catch a return bus at 2:30pm. That would drop us back in the village just in time to collect my son from school.

Thursday was the last day of the heatwave and there was a chance of storms as the heat broke, so I almost reconsidered. I didn't really want to carry rain paraphernalia with us—I'd rather be as light as possible for this trial run and had already decided that I would only bring swimming stuff for my daughter. But cancelling because of a low risk of storms felt like making excuses, so we chanced it without our rain gear.

Catching the bus into Bude went beautifully! It arrived on time, and from the top deck, we enjoyed stunning views of the countryside—and over the hedge into the allotment of an elderly gentleman who was beating the heat by gardening in skimpy underwear. It was mesmerising.

Once in Bude, we crossed the river to the quay and recklessly had ice cream for lunch, before hitting the beach. This was busy, but not packed like the recent news pictures of Bournemouth and Dorset. We soon discovered that the sea pool had re-opened after some construction work, so my daughter spent about half an hour swimming there while I watched in raging jealousy.

We left at 1:30 so that she could dry off before the bus trip back and wandered around town for a bit, did some impromptu parkour and watched the trout in the river, but she was keen on getting back to the bus-stop early so that we wouldn't miss the bus.

Ten minutes ahead of our departure time, the incoming bus rolled up and dropped off the passengers for Bude. All of them stepped down with due care for the glass all over the step: the bus door had shattered en route.

The bus driver was making some phone calls, and the five of us who were waiting for the return trip came to the conclusion that he wasn't going to be allowed to take on passengers in that condition. Nor were we going to see some roadside assistance man turn up with a replacement door.

Eventually, we got the information that a replacement bus would be coming, although as it had just left Launceston, we didn't expect to see it for at least half an hour.

Crisis Number One: My son would need picking up from school in half an hour.

I sent a frantic text to my parents as a backup plan and then called the school, asking if they could let my son take himself home. After a bit of checking around, it was agreed that we were all fine with that.

Although I lock the front door, I usually don't bother with the back: it's pretty safe in our part of the world anyway, and the builders see everybody coming and going. As soon as my son got home, he went round the building, over the wall into our garden... and found that the back door was locked.

He doesn't have a phone, but luckily for him, around the same time, it suddenly hit me that for once I'd actually locked the back door before going out. More frantic text messages went out: to my landlord and to a neighbour who worked with the builders on site. About twenty minutes after my son got home, half a dozen people turned up to open the door for him. That night, the landlord ordered me a spare set of keys.

Meanwhile, back in Bude....

Crisis Number Two: The Mysterious Case of the Cloned Buses

As well as the replacement 2:30 bus, there was a 3:20 bus. It had the same number, but it was the 'school run' bus and took a different route through different villages. You can see where this is going...

The 3:20 arrived before the replacement bus. I did say the name of our village, as I gave the bus driver my ticket, but I was wearing my face-mask and perhaps that muffled my voice. Certainly, the bus driver later assured me that I never told him where I was going.

I didn't worry at first when we took a different route... I know the local roads well enough to know that there are plenty of other routes back to the main road before our village. But then we got to the "I can see my house from here!" mark. We were across the valley from our flat, we could see the building on the hill top and we were most definitely going past it.

When we finally got back onto the main road, I had my brief altercation with the bus driver, but my main goal was to get us off the bus before it drove any further away from our village. Instead of arguing the point, I let the bus driver feel the full weight of my displeasure by disembarking without a "Thank-you!"

He said we should catch the return bus when that came along, but we weren't at a bus stop and I had no idea where the nearest one was. I also didn't know exactly when the next bus would be, but I did know we had either just missed it or it was almost an hour away. I toyed with the idea of getting a taxi, but according to my phone, we were three miles from home. I decided we'd walk.

My daughter was horrified. She was hot and tired already from our day out and was utterly convinced that a three mile walk in this heat (in flip flops, no less!) was beyond human endurance. She didn't specifically protest, but she wept for the first mile. After we survived that without heatstroke—it was still warm but the sky had clouded over—she got over it and abruptly started playing "I spy."

My main concern was that we would be run over since we had to walk directly on a twisty road where cars weren't expecting pedestrians. Fortunately, all we got were funny looks, both from cars and from cows and sheep who weren't used to seeing passers by. (My daughter had quite the conversation with one sheep behind a hedge who couldn't figure out who the mystery bleater was.)

The threatening storms never broke either, although the clouds continued to gather. We went slowly due to the heat, so it took us longer than I expected, but we were able to call my son en route and let him know what had happened—my daughter particularly enjoyed that round of sibling one-up-man-ship. "You were locked out? Try walking three miles home!"

In just under an hour, we crested a hill to look down at our village; the bus passed us a few minutes later. We stopped at the corner shop for some drinks and then pushed on home, finding the energy to break into a run for the last 100 or so metres.


Anyway, it's not the first time I've been caught out by a bus and it won't be the last. In some ways I think it was quite a good lesson for my daughter on recovering from public transport mistakes. Of course, it was also a good way to put her off the bus altogether, and every mention of taking a second trip into town has been met with a certain Look.

Luckily, my son is more interested in giving it a try, so we'll do it again... with a little more due caution for the return journey.