Anti Dementors picnic at the Loch.

[TheGreatWave]

Starting a new one.

In terms of school though, the primary has said make sure they wear a jumper or cardigan as all the windows will be open and they will need a coat for outdoors. Secondary - just send him in his ss school shirt.

The queues at Ikea in Germany were nuts when that reopened!

My 5 year old has hit the wall. Last night at bedtime he asked what was the point of living any more. I had to try so hard not to cry.

No play areas open in our part of London. The parks are otherwise heaving; ice cream kiosks open, people sunbathing and playing games.

Very little dementoring here too, except a few people grumbling about “selfish” joggers on the local Nextdoor page. I find Londoners are very good at minding their own business and being pragmatic. Very high population density means lots of people have no gardens and no one can afford to be too fussy about strict social distancing if they actually want to leave their homes.

It turned out that he was taking his cat for a walk in line with the government guidance that you could take out your pet for exercise. He had the piece of paper filled out and everything

Awesome.

I'm sure even the beach going Europeans are crapping on their beaches in a far superior way to the way the slovenly Brits to it.

Glad you are feeling a bit better Jourdain

My 5 year old has hit the wall. Last night at bedtime he asked what was the point of living any more.

What are we doing to our children?

Also, my mum in France saw her neighbour coming out of his apartment with his cat in a carry cage. And she said, "Oh, is the cat sick, are you going to the vet?" It turned out that he was taking his cat for a walk in line with the government guidance that you could take out your pet for exercise. He had the piece of paper filled out and everything

😂 my boss his French. At one point her sister was lending out their family dog to their friends and neighbours. Poor thing must have been knackered

GreatWave our infants has said the same - but this time of the year the classrooms are such suntraps anyway that they ALWAYS have all the windows wide open so this is not some kind of glaring SHIT WILL BE DIFFERENT that they think it is!

Sorry I'm well behind but blended bloody learning? I'd want a tax refund for half or whatever goes towards education. Why should you pay for it if you're not bloody getting one?!

If England follow suit I will be absolutely bloody furious.

Sounds exactly the same as my part of London (Zone 2). So many people don't have gardens and there's only so much social distancing you can do on a busy pavement...

At one point her sister was lending out their family dog to their friends and neighbours. Poor thing must have been knackered

I've got a greyhound - they're not energetic at the best of times! Lazy fuckers.

Ha! I know @beachgoer. The only outrage on our local FB page is that they're not selling milkshakes and have a maximum order.

Some families are now letting their DCs into our nearest playground. There's signs and tape which people have broken.

Interesting observation with a friend- her DCs were probably infectious with Covid at school yet our school's not had any staff with symptoms.

@Jourdain11
I've literally been have this same conversation on WhatsApp with some of my friends who are unsure about sending their kids back. I know that the person has been having her mom round every day and whatever, I don't give a shite that she has, but I said that I just don't understand people wringing their hands about sending their kids back to school unless they have 100% stuck to the rules.
Her main concern does seem to be that the school have placed so many restrictions on the kids that her reception child will hate it and become very reluctant to go.

@Pinkflipflop85
Oh your poor little boy
Mine is a bit younger but has been really struggling. He has been missing his nana desperately so we decided to see her (she is not vulnerable, lives alone and works from home) and it did us all the world of good.
That and the beach trip have really lifted his spirits.
If you guys are not shielding perhaps you could do something a bit "normal" to cheer him up?

Apparently YouTube have been removing any material that throws into question government health guidance citing it as dangerous to public health.

But Sikora is not and never has been inciting people to not follow the guidance..? He's made it clear he feels it's appropriate for children to return to school, but so has Boris Johnson. He's never encouraged people to ignore lockdown or start licking strangers. As far as I can see all he's done is be optimistic about how the pandemic may progress from here. Bloody hell.

I agree with PP re London pragmatism. You can't live in close proximity to so many people without accepting that... Well, you're going to have people in close proximity, and also that you have to live and let live. People generally seem to have stopped jumping back from each other and getting edgy about the inevitable close passes and there are more smiles.

Jourdain it's nice to see you back on here. I've been thinking of you.

I've had those days where there's been nothing to look forward to. What's helped me is trying to sit down and make a list of things I can do now which will be fun - I don't want to be patronising because I'm sure you'll have tried this kind of thing if you're struggling, but the smallest things like half an hour of really upbeat music on Spotify or a plan of a longer walk and a picnic helps. I'd advise trying something like learning to crochet or learning the ukulele or something like that (lots of video tutorials on Youtube) as doing something creative even for 10 minutes a day does help. I was isolated a lot as a child for serious health reasons and being creative got me through a lot of it. Seeing something grow bit by bit that only exists because you've put time and effort into it helps so much. It's distracting too. I know it's not always that easy though and people might have already tried these things.

The care home thing I'm honestly on the fence with. Sending people back to care homes without testing them is dreadful and should never have happened. But care homes always have a high number of staff going in and out and residents needing hospital attention - it was always going to be an uphill battle to keep them virus free. And an hcp said on here that they were faced with this killer virus speeding towards them and their priority was clearing wards of frail vulnerable people who were healthy and just bed blocking to protect them as far as they could so the instinct was to rush them out (bearing in mind it would also be a scandal if you had had elderly patients with no health problems catching the virus in hospitals when they were just waiting for discharge), not to mention they had to urgently clear beds for the tsunami of virus patients they were expecting. I don't think it's an excuse, btw, it's just not always clear cut. I think the care homes should have had far more training about isolating patients and assuming they had the virus when they were sent back home.

Someone put a photo up on Twitter which showed deaths in other countries have included a higher proportion of people in care homes than here. I don't actually know if that's true or not.

Hauntedgoatfart I have just been saying pretty much the same thing on another thread.
There seem to be plenty of us who were exposed left, right and centre, prior to lockdown and not so much as a mild sore throat.

My DCs have spent a couple of hours playing in a giant fallen tree in a park. Unfortunately we left it a bit late to catch the greasy industrial burger vans on the way back.

Some sports courts have opened up. We managed to walk into one, and the DCs enjoyed the basketball ring/ goal mouth.

I wish playgrounds would open up againn although our neughbourhood one is crap for anyone over 5. Middle class estates don't deserve decent playgrounds even if they have postage stamp gardens. The council estare gardens are easily 3x bigger and they get the good play equipment.

But care homes always have a high number of staff going in and out and residents needing hospital attention - it was always going to be an uphill battle to keep them virus free.

My grandfather was in a care home for 6 years. It was regularly "locked down" because a either norovirus or flu had got it and they needed to contain it.

The residents were very vulnerable to infections and whenever there was an outbreak like that a number of them would die.

That's just the reality of looking after the very elderly and extremely frail.

If I see viral load used to mean multiple exposure one more time, I am going to scream.

Parks are not open here. Kids are really being thrown under the bus. Forced to be removed from education to save the older generations. Play areas still closed but golf courses and garden centres open - again appealing to the older generation. I was questioning today why the zoo can't open - lots of open space, easy to social distance (easier than a garden centre!). Or our local country park which has a gruffalo trail (no need to touch anything) and ducks to feed. It would be very easy to implement social distancing and limit numbers entering, but they're closed. Luckily grandma can play golf.

Driving and halloween, I hit that wall on Tuesday..made worse by the excruciating toothache and the fear around it
I didn’t cry, I howled and dh Held me and let me howl it out
There’s something quite primeval About howling. We dont get chance to do it often enough

You can release a lot of fear , despair, and grief this way because that’s whatS at the root of it. I think it also lessened the physical pain a little bit
I don’t want to go into a garden centre in an orderly queue and tart up the garden
I want a normal life with messy human beings in it because that’s what we are and that’s how we grow.

I’m going to have a nice bath, drive to Durham have a walk and indian takeaway..outside
My friend said..is it safe
Yes as it’ll ever be

Oh god the backpedalling has begun. School can't manage the numbers needing to return so one year group isn't going back now.

Please please please don't pull the kid's place as vulnerable and not coping... please no. I feel physically sick praying the phone doesn't ring or my email doesn't go.

That article with Sunetra Gupta is amazing - someone just shared it on my FB too. It's not like Oxford is some crappy university full of second rate scientists. It seems entirely plausible than many are naturally immune - I believe some of the early cruise ship cases demonstrate that is the case because they were perfect conditions for the virus to spread through everyone and it didn't - it affected a minority.

I have to say it is annoying me how many parents have decided their children will "hate" (going back to school/nursery) and so won't send them back. At least let the kids try it out and decide for themselves if they hate it?

I also wonder if many parents are not noticing the effects of lockdown on their children because they're seeing them every day. I saw some wee family members today (from a distance and they're very much rule followers). It was the first time I'd seen them since Jan and it struck me how quiet and withdrawn the kids were. It was quite sad to see as they're normally so full of beans.

Unfortunately the mum is super anxious and is insistent she's not sending them back until after the summer holidays. I just worry about the shape the kids will be in mentally if the first time they get to see other kids is in September.