So today is the first day of homeschooling and if I say so myself, it’s gone pretty well! The table was laid with all the equipment they needed, their timetable had been set & they were up for 8:30am to do PE with Joe Wicks. Everyone is thinking of ways to keep the kids engaged and prevent boredom. It’s ace! We decided to do 3 hours a day of school work, creative time and then go for a daily walk to get some exercise. All wheels are in motion and no kick offs from the kids! I think we’ve got this sussed!

We all got sat down ready for the 5pm daily briefing and they said it was delayed to 8.30pm – alarm bells start to ring! Something is definitely going on!

8.30pm and Boris Johnson, the prime minister addresses the nation. The government have been in a COBRA meeting all day and have decided we need to be in a stricter phase of protection, lockdown! We can now only leave our homes for the following reasons, to buy essential food items, to obtain medicines, for an hour a day for exercise and to go to work (if working from home isn’t possible.) All non-essential shops are now closed. All my lovely clients will have to wait to have their roots done. Ahh I’m so sad today.

So, fast forward to Friday 23rd March 2020 and all the schools have closed their gates at 3.30pm for the foreseeable future. The government announced though that schools will be opening to keyworker children. Who are the key workers? They’re the NHS, supermarket staff, police, fire, GPs, careworkers, water supply staff, gas and electric staff, government staff – basically anytime we need to keep daily life running during this unprecedented times.

During the past week, it’s become a daily routine to listen to the prime minister at 5pm delivering his daily briefing to the nation. This alone shows that something huge is going on here and we’re just at the beginning. What will life become?

Today’s 5pm daily briefing has instructed from midnight on the 23rd March, all pubs and restaurants are to close their doors to the public. They can offer take away services only. Huge chains such as Macdonalds, KFC, Nandos all closed.

So to sum up this week, the schools are closed indefinitely, the pubs and restaurants are closed indefinitely. This is definitely not decisions that are being taken lightly.

The death toll has risen by 54 to a total of 335 people here in the UK – dated 23.03.20.

Boris Johnson has began delivering daily updates from the government live to the nation at 5pm. He is usually joined by two scientific leaders who update the nation on the fight against Coronavirus.

On Wednesday 18th March, Virus’s talk was all about education. He has notified everyone that all schools WILL close their gates on Friday for an indefinite amount of time.

Schools have been busy preparing work for children via home learning. This is going to be hectic! I’ve now got the big three all in high school & Isla’s curriculum to teach at home. How do I separate them but support them equally? How will they progress as they would in school? How do I keep them motivated daily? All whilst trying to cope with the fact a killer virus is on our streets. Argh! I can see a tough few months ahead.

Isla has come home with her log in details for Showbie, looks a fantastic platform for her learning. The big three have all come home with log in details for google classroom. We’re logged in and ready for Monday morning.

Following the tip off from Sarah, I thought it won’t come to anything here. Supermarkets were well stocked until the numbers started rising.

Asda quickly sold out, everyone is panic buying! Not just toilet rolls – pasta, rice, eggs and bread flour too.

The shelves soon empty, hand sanitizer and hand wash is something of the past. It’s becoming much more real that the UK is entering pandemic measures.

Early March, Jamie’s birthday and we decide to go away for a weekend. Isla, Kian and Daisy go to Nanny’s and Daze goes to stay with Bec. We had a lovely spa weekend. Lots of rest and relaxation. It was much needed!

Back to college and the girls are all discussing Coronavirus and one girl, Sarah was saying how her sister in Australia had been stock piling toilet rolls as unable to get any in Melbourne. I didn’t think twice about it. As if things would get that bad here. We’re an island 7,000 miles away from China. It’s all in hand.

Then the news broke, the UK had their first confirmed case; the Wirral had their first confirmed case – the panic begins!

Things have started getting a bit cray cray here in the UK. So, they decided to repatriate people from Wuhan to the UK in early February – where do they pick? Arrowe Park! Literally 4 miles up the road and where Bec works! I actually threatened to sit on her if she went to work! I’ve got a huge arse; she wouldn’t have been able to move. Anyway, 14 days of isolation for these passengers and we think “ah, we’ve got this! We’ve all got through unscathed.” How naive were we? Then they brought more coach loads from the repatriated Diamond Princess – “I don’t think this is going away anytime soon!”

But we carry on….we all go to work, school, college, the ASDA! We carry on our day to day normal lives and nothing changes until the figures start rising nationwide. This really isn’t going to go away any time soon.

So less about covid and a little bit about my background. I am Lucy, aged 40, happily married to Jamie and we’ve got four children, Kian (14 & hormonal), Jack (13, nerdy but sarcastic), Daisy (12, gorgeous soul but the hormones are building by the day) and Isla (8, highly strung and the boss!) We are a happy, tight knit family who love nothing more than spending time with our wider family and friends. There’s my niece Ava (also 8 and a tictok addict) and our little Archie (5 and our gorgeous baby). My sister Bec is a ward sister up at our local hospital, Arrowe Park, along with her fella Greg. My Dad passed away last year and is sorely missed. Mum lives in Lincolnshire and visits a few times a year. Jamie’s mum and dad (Nanny & Grandad….everyone knows them as that now!) live in Shrewsbury and are a fab support for us with the kids. Jamie’s sister Em, lives locally and is a permanent fixture on my sofa!

So that’s the fambo lowdown! More about me…. I’m a hairdresser working two days a week in the gorgeous pink salon, Let’s Get Gorgeous. I absolutely love anything hair! My little passion. I also have a little preloved clothing business which keeps my mind busy and I’m in college two days a week completing my level 3 advanced hairdressing. I run on coffee and adrenaline! Busy, busy, busy 24/7!

Fast forward to the end of January and Covid-19 is now highlighting itself all over the world. A cruise liner, the Diamond Princess which was cruising the coast of east Asia moored off shore in Yokohama, Japan amidst a epidemic of 619 passengers being tested positive for the virus. That’s a lot of people when you think the ship had only 3,700 passengers. How did the passengers on this cruise liner contract the disease whilst out at sea?

As well as the cases in China and Japan, there was a high number of cases becoming apparent in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy. Travel to cities such as Venice and Milan were cancelled and the normally vibrant, abundant cities become desolate. Why here? Why Italy? Things escalated quickly in Italy and soon the whole country was on a complete lockdown for their own safety.

The Italian prime minister quoted “Rescue your people”

In desperate times, the Italian prime minister begged to God, “rescue your people”.

This is something we all asked ourselves in early January. It was cold, Christmas had been and gone and this new killer virus was taking shape in China. “Ah, the Chinese are weird anyway, they eat anything!” A doctor in China had leaked on the 19th December 2019 in Wuhan, China that a human strain of an animal virus had been contracted. Wtf? How? Apparently, Wuhan Market was selling live bats for their customers to eat! Beyond gross, but that’s just my opinion. From eating a live bat, someone had contracted Coronavirus. Now, this is a brand new human virus. No one knew how to treat it and it spread like wildfire around Wuhan city, the epicentre of Covid-19. Naively, we believed it would contain to Wuhan; a very naive mind indeed.