I headed in to work on Monday for a much calmer few days than the previous week! There’s still a lot going on in the background, but we’re definitely now on the down-hill run to the summer holidays. We made some homemade pasta on Tuesday evening, and were very excited when our new coffee machine arrived as well. After some staffing hurdles to discuss with the head teacher, and spending a lot of time looking through final grades for reports on Tuesday, it looked like the rest of the week was going to be pretty relaxed.   And then we got a notification from the Track & Trace app on Wednesday saying that we’d been exposed to someone who’d tested positive for Covid-19 and we had to self-isolate for 8 days. We had done tests that had come back negative on Monday afternoon, but we both did tests again on Wednesday and those were negative too – so not feeling concerned about having it, just frustrated about being stuck at home! Particularly since we’re 99% sure we would have been exposed on that train on Sunday night! Needless to say, we certainly sent a grumpy email to Chiltern Railways.

After heading home at lunchtime on Wednesday and cancelling all our plans for the week, I attended our leadership meeting that afternoon via Teams. Thursday and Friday were busy and productive, albeit from an admin perspective. On Thursday I planned maths for the rest of the term, as well as mapping out some dates for events for transition. On Friday I spent the day neck-deep in data, to write a report about the impact of our support and intervention on the children’s outcomes. That should certainly keep me going on Monday, and then I’ll do some more planning and deal with whatever else comes up on Tuesday and Wednesday. So I should definitely be feeling very organised by the time I can go back to work on Thursday!

For the weekend, we’ve caught up on TV shows, skyped Mum and Dad and Jaimie, done a beer tasting and we’re skyping Peter’s mum tonight. I also made a load of progress on my puzzle and my audiobook, and have been reading a lot. Our Sunday evening plan is to make a slow-cooked beef stew and then play an escape game, so it definitely feels very reminiscent of our lockdown weekends!

I’ve got to say though, we’ve done very well by not having to self-isolate before. My whole team have done at least one block of self-isolation each – Bec and Kate have both done two each due to flatmates getting covid or being contacted by Track & Trace, so I’m the only one who hadn’t yet. We actually haven’t had to self-isolate/quarantine (not counting lockdown) since I got back from Australia – ironically, exactly a year ago to the day when we received the notification! So not ideal, but we’re being safe by following the rules and we’re finding the silver linings on catching up on work admin and home bits.