Arthur and Saoirse are over for the weekend

Saoirse in the buggy singing
Jingle Bells

This time last year, Margaret’s biggest worry about Christmas was whether to get a turkey or a goose. This year, we weren’t sure there would be a Christmas.

With typical incompetence, this shower of a government had promised Covid-19 would all be over by Christmas. Well they were wrong! Perhaps if they’d had proper tracking measures in place, decent testing and some kind of sensible policy, it could have been under control, but they didn’t and it isn’t.

Science advisors had suggested a two-week lockdown in September as infection rates climbed with schools and universities back, but they said that wasn’t necessary. By the time they realised they were wrong, we needed a four-week lockdown, which comes to an end this week, but it doesn’t seem to have done a lot of good. Peterborough went into lockdown in tier 1 (the least severe) and we’re coming out of lockdown in tier 2 (worse than when we went in!). I have no idea how the hell that is possible.

This morning, the main news is a survey which says rates are dropping fast and the R-rate (re-infection rate) is down to 0.8, so someone has got their figures wrong or the decimal point in the wrong place.

What we do know is that we’re still under strict restrictions about who can come into the house (no-one basically), but schools are open, you can go to the pub as long as you are having a meal and all shops are open. Oh! You can also go to the gym and there can be up to 2,000 people at a football match.

Restrictions are being lifted over Christmas across the UK, so up to three households can meet together for Christmas. We have all been invited to Sam’s and it now seems clear that we’ll be able to go. Max and Inna were invited too, but their baby will be born any day now and they have decided (quite sensibly) that they’ll have a quiet Christmas at home.

I did go for a walk with Max last week, but it was the first time I’d seen him for a while. We had a cold (perhaps Covid) and then he had to self-isolate because he’s had contact with someone who later tested positive. Anyway, we had a nice walk around Watermead, near Syston, and then a picnic in the rain in the car, breaking another lockdown rule.

There are so many rules that I can’t keep up so, like many people, I’m just doing what seems sensible.

This weekend, we had Arthur and Saoirse staying with us. Apparently, we’re allowed to be designated as a carer and as long as we don’t mix with Sam or Lucy, we can look after the kids. It’s another rule that doesn’t make any sense, but hey-ho! It was nice to see them and I’ve enjoyed spending some time together with Arthur doing a few things. There has been a marked change in him since he started school (he’s grown up a lot). I think it’s been very good for him.

He has a reading book and is doing pretty well with learning his letters. He’s also very keen to learn, so that’s really good news. We did some sawing wood and nailing bits together and also watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which he really enjoyed. On the way back to Soham last night, we had a very philosophical conversation about numbers.

Arthur is an angel in the school
nativity play. His costume is
one of my old shirts adapted
by Auntie. He also has a halo
but no wings (wings are
too distruptive).

He’d been counting cars (I’d heard random numbers being mouthed in the back) and, at March, he declared he’d reached 100. Were there enough numbers to count all the cars in the country? I said there were. Well, Arthur wasn’t sure about that. He’d had a conversation with his mum about the number of stars and she’d told him there weren’t enough numbers to count all the stars.

I said there were certainly a lot of stars, but we did have a number (or at least an estimate for how many there were). He said: how many? I said I couldn’t recall, but I’m sure there was a number available (I can’t drive and Google at the same time). He wasn’t happy with that answer. I then introduced the concept of infinity (which is when numbers run out) and he was very interested in that especially when we talked about infinity +1, but then it’s not infinity, is it? He fell asleep at Witcham Toll contemplating infinity, which is when Saoirse, who I thought was fast asleep because she was so quiet, chipped in with a number of profound statements, which I couldn't hear very well. She wasn’t too bothered about a proper answer, fortunately, and was happy to make her proclamations without hearing a sensible response.

The funniest thing Arthur does is mix up his personal and possessive pronouns. Instead of saying "she always does that" he says "her always does that". It's very cute. I don't think it's right to correct him, but I will say "she does, doesn't she" to which he answers "her does".

Saoirse is now at nursery three days a week and that’s also, clearly, been good for her. She copies Arthur reading and will sit with a book, pointing at letters and making random sounds. She’s also got a desire to learn.

She has new words and phrases, too. She says “OK” quite often. I was reading them a bedtime story and she got out of bed to stand on the landing. Margaret, who was in her bed waiting to put them down when I’d finished the stories, told her to get back into bed. “OK”, said Saoirse, still standing there. She also says “please” and “thank you” and the other thing she says is “help me, please”. Her great joy remains to jump – she’s more than happy to stand and jump, but if she can find something to jump off, she’s especially happy.

Maybe they have been learning Jingle Bells at nursery, because she’s singing extracts from it “jingle, way, bells, jingle” to herself. Margaret took her for a walk in the purple buggy on Saturday (that generally gets her off to sleep) but they walked all around the village for about an hour and a half with Saoirse singing her cover version of “jingle, way, bells”.