An eerie in the Highlands

March-April 2020

We wake up on the first mornings to an impossibly beautiful view - a warm yellow sun, carpets of yellow daffodils, and dusk falls like this. 

We look and we sigh, and then we remember. The dark tentacles curl in  - reminding us that all is not as it seems. Nature is doing what it normally does, but we are not. An our thoughts flit for a moment from the reassurance of a Scottish glen, to the screaming sirens of New York and well-meaning volunteers assembling a makeshift hospital in Central Park. ('Central Park?!' the Lozenge said. So it won’t be a park anymore?'), and now London and poor, beautiful Italy - whose people show us how to live like no other - and now, how to die. And although we know we all will, at some stage, none of us are ready for the notion of hundreds and thousands around the world dying alone, as the doctors in intensive care are warning us. 'With this disease, you die alone.'

On day one, we see Grandma waving at us from the other side of our window, but we can't let her in and we can't  go out to see her. The Lozenge spontaneously bursts into tears - like a prison visiting experience when they have the glass in between their hands. We explain it how everyone else is explaining it, though none of us really knows or understands the truth. 'To see her in real life in a year, 5 years, 10 years is better than for these two weeks,' we say. As so many parents are saying to their children around the world as we're warned to protect the over 70s by not seeing them. 'There may be worse things than just those same old nits that you’re carrying in that thatch of hair,' we add. He squeezes out a laugh.

But it is the most extraordinary feeling to be surround by my family, yet not able to meet them. We creep around trying to avoid each other as seeing each other but not being able to hang out, is almost worse than not meeting at all. 

The first weekend, before J leaves for London for two weeks, we go on a hike up the hill to remember the first anniversary of Sam Younger's death. He lived for a little while near us in Jerusalem and was one of those mid-generation links between us and the children who are so dear and so important. A free spirit, beginning the exciting bit of his life journey post-school. We walk to the nearest snow patch. The Pea legs are still quite short but with some cajoling she makes it.  Debbie the dog gets heather chaffing on her tummy. The boys make a big S on the snow out of pine cones and call into the cold air, over the hills and the heather: ‘We will never forget you Sam.’

 

The creative crate is cracked into almost immediately, which we've salvaged from the haul going to Oman thinking that our delay could be months (and we were right). Hamish starts on the lino cutting and splices into his own hand rather than the lino every five minutes. There is more plaster than hand after a while. The Lozenge asks: 'What's for lunch?' about 1 hour after breakfast. But from the lino we have a version of our new view and it feels nice to be able to start filling up the 'new farm house' as Petra is calling it, with evidence of human life. There will be a lot more where that comes from I think as I assemble a collection of stags' teeth, pebbles hewn by the river, and a sheep jaw beside it.

By lunchtime the Lozenge says ‘Alhamdullillah. I’ve been waiting for this moment

since breakfast.’ The Lozenge thinks he’s Garfield. 'More lasagna,' he shrieks with laughter. Garfield turns out to be a benign presence all through lockdown. 

We’re already getting into the swing in our eerie in the highlands - although probably only because it's holiday time and we can do what we like with our days. But down below the village feels a different kind of eery. The streets are as deserted as those in London. The lady in the shop looks afraid and takes a step back behind her screen when we enter. We realise to other people we are newcomers from the South and might be carrying a virus. We wander past the Bank of Scotland building where I used to go with Mum and she would let me scribble all over a blank cheque from a stack on the counter - the pen attached to the slab. In this village there was once a post office, a fishing tackle shop, a butcher and a bank. None of those now, but instead there's an Israeli baker doing a roaring trade with bread flour and loaves delivered to the door. I feel very suddenly connected to this place again - in a deeper way than during our fleeting holiday visits. I feel the sense of adventure in showing the children the things we used to do at their age. We have time and we have no plans. We can explore everywhere.

Jamie leaves for London to help out in his office which is piecing together a new working reality as every other institution. His pictures of the deserted streets are poignantly beautiful. I feel uneasy with him in a different place - the news talking more and more about younger people being struck down with the virus. I'm cast back to that feeling of our 18 months when J was working in Baghdad, though the children are now a bit older. But there's no school, no St Grace, and now two ginger pets who are luckily devoted to each other and immune from this particular virus.

Every day we have an out of doors mission which lasts 3-4 hours. For most minutes of each of these hours I’m thankful for this eternity of space around us - there are no barricades, no fences we can’t climb. We are totally and utterly free - albeit for being refugees within our own lives. But then so are most people on the planet. Ours is only stranger because we are between homes. But we’re good at making ourselves at home - and here we are in ‘the new farm’ and it is swiftly looking like all our other homes with toys and bits of cardboard and tape, an odd sock, a dog lead tied from the bottom of the banister to a teddy bear.

I write a vague list of adventures there at our finger tips both inside and outside of the house, and each day we have at least one thing left over that we didn’t manage to fit in, and is pushed to tomorrow. I did a course once where we had writing exercises in constraint and freedom. So writing with constraint is for example, where you have describe everything in one small room, and as many ideas that spring from that room. And freedom you have all the freedom your head can give you. And there are always more ideas in the constraint. Strangely, by being constrained for those two weeks, the choices are richer, more real, juicier. And none of them involve getting in the car as there's nowhere to go.

For a couple of days I fight to keep my corner - getting up at 5am to work, and trying to work when the smaller fry have gone to bed. But that lasts about one morning. I have momentary despair wondering where the entire framework of my life has gone. The only continuities are the people and the pets, but J is not here either. All my work is canned.   (I was offered a remote job helping the WHO make films with their Iran team, but that was withdrawn as Covid got much worse and poor team were in a bad way. And then some work with Al Jazeera was also cancelled because they had budget cuts). I start to feel like Mr Small and all his unfortunate jobs that don't work out, so in the end I drop my own ball, and change my life back into that of a child for the 2 weeks I'm alone with them in lock down. 

When you're with children you have a much better time, and so do they, if you get down with the children. Like when you film pigeons, you have to get down with the pigeons - they look much more interesting that way, than from above.  On their level the world comes to life in a totally new way. A bit like riding a horse, you can totally succumb to its power whilst still nudging it in a direction you want. Well, that's the idea anyway.

I eat what they eat at the times they eat, I skip or run I don’t walk. I shout and laugh and tell stupid jokes, I jump over streams and get my feet wet, I make my own pickaxes with them from flint and stick and binder twine, and when I am about to turn adult again, or they do something annoying and I feel some anger rising, I recite one of the following to them: 'Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, so Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t Fuzzy was he?’ Or ‘Algi met a bear, the bear met Algi, the bear grew bulgy, the bulge was Algi.’ And then I’m turned back again - into my small self - the one I can’t really remember. But she’s still in there somewhere.

April Fool’s day doesn't go quite so well. Every door way is taped up with traps, a towel lands on my head every time I climb the stairs, the Lozenge gives me a high 5 with his hand covered in soap, I have salt in my cereal…and I never have time or energy to plan my revenge. 

And I also have to keep writing things down. I feel our children’s childhoods are suddenly like water through our fingers. Beautiful, indescribable yet tangible, and suddenly - gone. And because we're moving house and country all the time, I don't have anywhere to store things. I get momentarily fanatical about a little painting or poem here and there, and then I can't remember which box I put it in. So perhaps writing things down is the solace I need - and the stuff of our lives to show the smalls when they get older and start to blame us for this itinerant life we subjected them to.

One morning, we try to do the Joe Wicks work out but Lozenge says he doesn't like being told what to do from someone on the TV, the Pea comes down in a sucker tight leotard 'with thparkleth', and joins in for a bit with me, but I land awkwardly on one knee while trying to avoid a lego figure and limp for the rest of the week. Rashimi whips out his new camera and takes pictures of my bottom in different poses. And we end the session with everyone on top of me while I do the plank. I don’t think Joe Wicks is going to be a regular lock down feature in our household. 

One of the best bits about being in lock-down with three children and two pets, is the philosophical conversations which take your mind away from pandemic panic. ‘You see that field, Mummy?’ ‘Which field?’ (There's a choice of about 6 in sight). ‘That big one. Do you think there are as many blades of grass in that field as there are people in the world?’ 

Lozenge: ‘Probably at least 7 billion, and now there are more people than that in the world now, aren’t there?’ 

Me: ‘There’s only one way to find out…one…two…three…’ one way to while away a lock down day.

We have a family joke which is that whenever the subject of how babies are made comes into question, J suddenly goes a bit quiet and I'm left on my own doing the talking. So fortunately, unfortunately into the ‘now’ packing (of our 3 categories: ‘now’, ‘stash in Dad’s shed’ and ‘Oman') slipped ‘What’s the big secret?’ which is a book about our bodies and what they do, which the Pea plucks out every bedtime to be read to her. I laugh as think how thrilled J would be not to be here at this point.  But she is completely fascinated and runs around shrieking ‘Mummy! My testicles!’ or ‘You have a scrrrrrotum, and I don’t!' to the Lozenge and Rashimi. ‘What’s a scrotum?’ asks the Lozenge.  And then Rashimi pushes me for the full explanation of how to make a baby and when I give it, the Lozenge says, ‘Oh gross, when I am an adventurer (which is what I want to be, by the way Mummy) and I have children they are never going to know how they came into the world. And I think anyway I will be a British Bachelor.’

Petra is scholastically applying herself to school chores in the early days (she soon gives up all notion of it and becomes feral exploring the fields alone with Daisy her cousin and Debbie the dog). She sits, breathing heavily, doing her hand writing, which is all curly and cursive with little tails each side:

Dad
Him
But
Rashimi says: 'Petra, ‘but’ has two t’s.
'Oh, okay.'
Another curly t onto butt.
'So what does but mean?'
But like butt cheek!

But they are also thoughtful. One night I choose to have dinner after them, and Rashimi asks: ‘Mummy, are you going to have a lonely dinner?’

We go on many expeditions. Climbing is Rashimi’s favourite, and he’s fashioned two pick axes out of slate and stick and binder twine to help him scale a mud wall. The Lozenge gets pissed off as he finds climbing harder. And then we come home and they’re knitting and Rashimi says: ‘Oh I give up because Laurie’s much better than me.’ and then I have to cajole one or the other into keeping going and not giving up and not looking over their shoulder, but to compete with their self, not their brother.  Just before I go to bed I do a quick line of Rashimi’s knitting so he feels he’s making progress. Like the elves and the shoemaker. Some elf.

Rashimi has not been interested in his school reading so I get him to read to the Pea at night, plucking away the 'Isn't it Amazing' book and planting some Mr Men and Little Miss books into his hand while I pour myself a strong drink even though I tried to promise that I would not drink while J was away. ‘Early one morning Little Miss Magic awoke in Abracadabra Cottage, which is where she lived….’ his sister's head on his shoulder breathing very heavily onto his cheek. Yes, there are moments that need to be recorded.

For these two weeks, it is very bizarre to be living right next door to all of my family, and not able to see them. We have to keep busy in order to forget we aren't allowed to see them. And it's strange because the children get it very quickly, and seem to understand. We all wonder what it will be like to hug everyone again. We say we will never take it for granted.

We also watch a lot of films. Kes, Shawshank Redemption and also The Breadwinner -  the Irish animation about a little Afghan girl Parwana who disguises herself as a boy and rescues her father from Pul e Charki jail. They are fascinated, but the boys keep asking questions about the Taliban just before bed…and I wonder about my decision to watch this film.

We walk all the way to Loch Moraig and they make dens while I peel bark off a silver birch tree  while sitting on a soft piece of moss. They make a town hall and a black smith shop. We are accompanied by 2 swans, curlews, gulls, and a tiny lost lamb with black face and four black legs. Beeeeee! (Mum) Baaauauuuaa! Beeeeeeeieee (Mum) Baaaauaaa. We manage to reunite them.

We spend most of an afternoon crossing a fallen log over a river, rock climbing with home made picks from slate and wood and binder twine, and we make fires and skim stones. If it wasn't so weird it really would be truly wonderful.

I have ideas of all sorts of things I could be making within my own life from things to write, and things to film and other things - but the ideas bubble up and evaporate from the surface into nothing. My smaller companions choose what we want to do. It's wholesome, and we all do it together so I try not to berate the shrinkage of my own life. But it's hard, I have to admit. I have got so used to my freedom to work and be a Mum and the energy of that variety. By night I'm out cold by 10pm. I keep trying to wake up at 5 and do some work, but I lie there listening to the bad news on the radio unable to move. I'm not certain it's a good way to start the day, but I don't want to not know.

My room of my own has resorted to a small canvas bag with Virginia Woolf's book name printed on it. But my companions seem as happy they could be in this strange new reality, even without their friends around, and even without a bizarre separation from their family surrounding them.