As it so happens, we end up during lock down in a beach house with the extended family.  Six adults and five children, six years and under.  I am chronicling our days here for my own amusement.

Day zero, the last day to go into town for supplies.  We had everything we needed but it still seemed like we should make a list and send it to the one person who went to town.  “Please can you pick up a splash pool, a trampoline and a stapler.  And coffee filters”.  So we are definitely going to need a moving truck to get home at the end of these 21 days.

The morning consisted of a discussion around formulating a routine for the children.  Although both highly creative, high-capacity people, my sister (Helen) and I are both accustomed to outsourcing when it comes to creative educational programmes for children.  We wrote a vague plan on a piece of paper and committed to actually checking out some of the resources that have been shared with us.

We did decide that forcing children to eat their meals at the dining room table was a good start and that was all fine until Fred suggested everyone hold hands for grace.  Hope had never been confronted with the hand-holding thing and so she refused to hold Raphi’s hand.  Raphi took this as a huge offense and decided to scoot her chair as far from Hope as she could and this offended Hope.

The afternoon was fairly eventless.  Fred tried out a lock down home work out and made it half way through the 30 minutes.  He then sat down and wondered if it was time for sundowners.  It was only 2:30pm.  His afternoon instead consisted of looking after baby Rose (who is two years old) so that Helen could work.  I found him on the couch with the four children watching the Party Rockers music video.  I suggested he rather try ‘Wonky Donkey’ which had proved a huge hit earlier in the day.

Raphi and Hope did manage to lock themselves in our bedroom, which provided a bit of excitement.  Fred came to the rescue.

Dad invited Helen and I to join him on a late afternoon 5km seaside run (which will not be possible during lock down).  Dad is a running maniac and has already paced out the garden for lock down training runs.  A late afternoon seaside run sounds idyllic but the wind was blasting and it was pretty cold.  Also, the timing was not ideal, but nonetheless we left to the screams of baby Rose and returned to the screams of baby Jethro.

The run itself was actually quite refreshing.  I knew Helen would try to race me to the finish and of course she did.  I will never be okay with just letting my little sister beat me at anything and so I just about finished myself off trying to catch up with her.  Which I did.

As well as babysitting the children for the afternoon, Fred cooked us a roast leg of lamb for supper.  That’s not Fred on a typical afternoon so please don’t have husband envy.

Supper was supreme and all six adults were able to enjoy it around the dining room table together because we compromised on the idea that children should sit around the dining room table when they eat.  The children ate in front of the TV.

We ended the day off with watching a bit of American coronavirus politics (brother in law Christopher is American).  We then watched a local news insert about South Africans queuing for booze.