It’s been a wild ride but we finally made it to the end of term! Looking back through the term, it definitely feels longer than six weeks – particularly the two weeks before the last week when my teaching partner was in isolation and teaching from home after we had our first positive Covid case in the school/in year six. After that, three of my children also had to go into self-isolation after they had contact with friends/family who tested positive as well. Luckily this didn’t spread any further into the class and we made it through assessment week in week five, and through to the last week.

It was an incredibly busy week, with data analysis from the assessment week, marking all of the children’s writing assessment pieces, and preparing and then carrying out our first virtual parent evenings on Wednesday and Thursday. Simultaneously with all of that, Peter and I had finally caved and emailed our landlord requesting the boiler be repaired so we could have hot water/heating again. Completely predictably, she responded with an aggressive email demanding that I be home from 12-6 on Thursday and Peter leave the house for the appointment.  We of course responded explaining that I had work (not to mention parent evening) and could not be there at that time, but requesting that she not attend, given that Peter could let the engineer in. This request, and a second one sent on Wednesday, was ignored and we had a week of anxiety awaiting Thursday and what that could hold. Not surprisingly, she turned up and withheld the repair until Peter would let her into the apartment – for what purpose, who knows? Again unsurprisingly, the boiler required a part that the engineer didn’t have, so the hour-long appointment ended in a follow up afternoon appointment made for the following day, for which I was planning to rush home. 

We had our usual ‘Zoom bad movie night’ on Thursday night, but ended up mostly speaking to Rachel and Stu about the house situation, the landlord debacle and Christmas.  As Rachel lost her mum a few months back, they were originally supposed to just have Stu’s parents coming over on Christmas day and then had offered to pick us up in the car on Boxing Day after dropping his parents back home. However, with increasing restrictions, they’d decided not to see Stu’s parents as they’re older so more at risk. Instead, they offered to pick us up on either Christmas eve or Christmas day so we could spend Christmas with them and stay for a couple of days – after self-isolating the week before so we’d all be as safe as possible. This was a nice plan to look forward to, although with the caveat that we’d have to keep an eye on what was happening over the next week.

On Friday the boiler engineer contacted the landlord in the morning (who did not contact Peter), and then turned up at the apartment without her. With the way his day had turned out, he’d been able to come earlier, so Peter got a nice surprise when he turned up and fixed the boiler!  Apparently she’d tried to get him to reschedule but that didn’t work with the appointments he had that day. This worked really well for me as well, as I got to enjoy my half day of school and was able to finish work and go along to the ‘Secret Santa celebration’ afterwards without stressing and rushing home. Convenient all around! And hot water and heating for Christmas break! The house was unbelievably warm when I got home compared to recent weeks. When Peter finished work on Friday we celebrated the end of term – and having hot water – by having a few beers and making the at-home-burger-kit that I’d won in an Instagram competition from Honest Burgers.

Saturday was a nice start to the school holidays, with a Skype chat with Mum, Dad, Jess and Steve and then a slow breakfast over a good book. I spent the morning relaxing and working on my bullet journal before a big walk up to Shoreditch and a decent run back. Thai leftovers for lunch and a yoga session made for a relaxing afternoon as well – not to mention a hot shower!  Later in the afternoon though, Peter had the heads up through the BBC that there was something happening with Christmas restrictions and that BoJo would be doing a press conference at 4.

We set up in front of the TV with a beer as Boris announced that London and the South East were going into a new ‘Tier 4’ (previously it was a 3-tier system), which is essentially localised lockdown. Tier 4 regions have a ‘stay at home’ order in force and non-essential shops/personal care/gyms etc. must close. They’re also ditching the ‘Christmas break’ in restrictions which would have allowed people to meet with up to three households for five days – they’ve limited this to just Christmas day in tier 1-3 regions of England and only your own household in Tier 4 regions. So there go our Christmas plans! At least it removes any uncertainty and takes away any pressure to do anything across the two weeks of Christmas break. We’ll just be at home but are going to sit down tomorrow and plan out a week of fun Christmas-y activities and a good Christmas menu for Christmas Eve and Day. These restrictions are (tentatively) only in place for the next two weeks so I guess we’ll see what happens after the next review on the 30^th!