Blog in the time of Coronavirus
25th March 2020
Categories: Latest News
For those of you that might remember, last year I wrote a few blogs. These talked about how I ended up living in Weston-super-Mare, getting to know the area and all the things about Weston I fell in love with. I also wrote a couple of blogs about how I coped (or didn’t cope) getting around town after rupturing my Achilles Tendon in the summer. They’re all on our blog page still, if you fancy a read.
As we’re all stuck indoors for the foreseeable future - and very much all in this together, I thought it might be worthwhile documenting this period with some more blogs. If you’re new to my musings, allow me to quickly bring you up to speed.
I’m the Tourism Marketing Officer for Visit Weston, and it’s usually me that looks after our Facebook posts, Twitter, Instagram and the website. I’m also tasked with organising the local and national advertising campaigns for Weston, encouraging people to come and visit our gorgeous little corner of the world. So under normal circumstances my job is great fun and my aim is straight-forward: get people to Weston-super-Mare. Of course lately, we've been saying quite the opposite, which takes some getting used to.
I moved to Weston in August 2018 from Yorkshire with my daughter (whom I call S in these blogs) and we both live with ‘D’ my (now) fiancé – returning readers: yes, we got engaged at Christmas :) Normally I work at the Visitor Information Centre at the Tropicana or at Grove House, but since the Coronavirus crisis, unsurprisingly, I’ve been working from home.
This means I’m not only working from home in my professional capacity, something I’m confident and very capable of – I’m now home schooling S, something I’m in no way confident or capable of - or so it seems so far! It’s already proving to be a struggle to manage these two important roles whilst trying to make sure we don’t also go stir-crazy indoors for twenty-three hours a day. So anyone else that’s suddenly had to become a teacher – I’m with you, I feel your pain; it’s hard, I know.
Whilst we’re on the topic of S, it’s her birthday on Sunday and she will be seven. All my plans and surprises I’d organised have had to go out of the window and whilst she isn’t going to know any different, I’m a bit gutted at what might have been. So seriously, if anyone has any ideas of what I could do to make her birthday special given this horrendous time, I’d be very grateful.
The most recent change (as of today, Wednesday) is that now D is also at home with us. His workplace closed temporarily yesterday and so at least now I have some moral support with S and her Key Stage 1 maths, phonics and such like. Her school have put together a brilliant pack of learning resources and so in addition to some ideas of our own, she’s working through that lot. But I’m thinking we’ll run out of ideas as time goes on.
As we’re not lucky enough to have a garden (unsurprisingly in a fifth floor flat) we’re very reliant on our daily exercise and outdoor time, to save us all from getting cabin fever. Yesterday we took a stroll around Marine Lake and Knightstone, and whilst it was a beautiful evening – the sunset being particularly spectacular, I found the emptiness and quiet to be quite eerie. Thankfully the majority of the other people we came across, also positioned themselves further away from us as we passed, but frustratingly a few didn’t. I hope that people start being a little more aware of how serious this all is, and be mindful of not walking in their groups right down the middle of the prom, and quickly!
It’s a difficult subject matter to try and explain to a (nearly) seven-year-old; attempting to get the balance between not scaring her, whilst being honest and helping her to understand why she’s not at school, why she can’t travel to Yorkshire to see her Dad, and why we have to avoid other people when we’re out and about. Nor do I want her thinking these aren’t extraordinary circumstances we’re all facing. At bedtime the other night, I tried to explain how when she’s a Grandma, many years from now, that people will ask her ‘What was it like when Coronavirus happened?’ These are such unprecedented times, it’s even difficult for me as an adult to grasp the magnitude of what we’re experiencing right now.
So, going forward, I thought it’d give you all something else to read and honestly, it’ll probably be a useful task for me to write these blogs, almost like a journal, to communicate our story and how it’s probably very similar to lots of you at home reading this.
Hopefully there’ll be some funny stuff, interesting stuff, valuable stuff that I can pass on along the way, in a bid to keep us from going batty. As long as we’ve got positivity, our health and enough toilet roll, we’ll come through this together.
Until next week: keep checking our Facebook, Instagram, website and what-not. I’ll do my utmost to deliver engaging and interesting things to stave off some of the boredom, and also – feel free to get in touch if you want me to share anything; your stories, your ideas etc. I’d love to hear from you.
Stay safe, keep smiling –
Emma
