Hi, I thought I would pop back in. I sort of bowed out at the start of the first lockdown. Post viral fatigue, 12 months of major building works next door, and the stress of my mother's probate, sort of did me in.
DD has been at home for 15 months since they first closed medical schools. She had her final intercalation exams last week, and a final presentation this morning and will somehow graduate as an engineer without ever setting foot in the University. She has coped really well with the weirdness but it has been weird. The opening up over the past few weeks has almost illustrated what she has missed. Medic sport, catching up with old school friends who are now working in London, and a drink next week with her project group who are curious to meet the medic who they only know from Zoom. The course was "really cool" and in terms of learning, there were some silver linings in having no distractions, so it was probably the least worst way to spend the year, but there is some sense of regret. Lots can happen but a career in the interface between medicine and engineering is a possibility. She is dyslexic so had never really enjoyed school, and did not apply to medical schools with a more academic focus, but who knows. Perhaps like her older brother, who is stuck in the US and three years from the end of his PhD, she will end up a long term student. Two years till she finishes medical school so lots of time to consider.
I am almost at the end of a complicated probate, made more difficult by family tensions, administrative logjams caused by lockdown, five different lawyers (all from the firm appointed by my mum as Executor) and Covid tenancy protections. (It was the tenant who was using my mum's property as a second home that caused the anguish, as she threatened to force us to go through the court process to get her to leave.)
Anyway all done now. We ended borrowing to buy others out with the advantage that we have a property by the sea for the summer, till we decide what to do with it. Perfect for DDs post exam party this evening. Then a mad dash for her to find somewhere to live next year. She has not seen her Bristol friends there since the start of lockdown so has not really been able to use networks, and the medics are all in established flats, whilst the others have left. 12 of the next 18 months will be outside Bristol so the fall back is to simply rent a studio on her own for the first six, as to some extent she has grown beyond a student flatshare. If Xenia's boys know of someone with a spare room....
And that is 15 months in five paras. I hope everyone is thriving. I am particularly interested in how Haff's son's intercalation went. I really hope we really are at the beginning of the end with the pandemic. Each time I read about Nepalese/Vietnamese/Indian mutations my heart sinks. More for our DC than for me.