‘The Lonely Goatherd’

The Sixteenth Sunday COVID Blog.

So this week began with a little return to normality. Back into my workplace each day but for a short amount of time and with COVID restrictions.

A temperature check by one of our school coaches Colin, who proclaimed that my temperature was so low I should technically be unconscious, that was until it was discovered that my car’s air conditioning was the culprit.

The foot pump sanitiser as I enter the building that taunts at my unbalanced toe pressure whilst I disperse far too much liquid into my hands. The painted two metre yellow social distance lines, the empty breezy building, intent to blow away any trace of this unseen foe.

The very heightened emotions at seeing friends and colleagues reminded me of how we really are; weirdly wonderful, with common threads of life, passion, and a genuine love for one another as human beings.
The friend that will tell you that you still have a hair roller in your fringe (due to the fact that your fringe is too long due to lockdown and using a roller lifts it from your face so you can actually see) and you then realise you have walked through the entire school building looking like this and had your temperature taken!

The class I was allocated was strangely quiet, seated at a measured distance; clean, careful, methodical, a text book scenario.

It all felt rather surreal, more abnormal than the ‘new normal’ there is always chatter but this was noticeably missing and I didn’t like it.

Once I began teaching, although still deathly quiet the atmosphere did begin to change. A few smiles, answers, sharing of ideas but a strange stillness.

As the days have moved on a little, life and normality have slowly begun to return, smiles and the occasional peel of laughter now ring as the coronavirus class fog lifts.

The one thing I did get to do that I did not expect was to fulfil an ambition. I have always hankered to play Maria Von Trapp in ‘The Sound of Music’ so much so that when I was around nine years old the only way I would take a hat off and actually go to school (due to a horrendous short haircut which made it hard to tell if I was Joy or Joe) was the suggestion from a next door neighbour that I looked just like ‘Maria’ in The Sound of Music!
The fact that I had to lead my socially distanced class in single file to the school gates, gave me this opportunity.

I did begin to sing “Do-Re-Mi” which was of course totally wasted on a youth who I am sure have no idea who Maria Von Trapp actually was let alone Julie Andrews, it did however make them smirk.

Next week will end with the start of the ‘School Summer Holidays’ usually a week full of excitement and anticipation, noise and bustle, this will be noticeably lacking. Another victim of COVID and it’s mission to suck the joy from life.

I did suggest to my class we could perform a socially distanced ‘conga’ on the last day in our line and this was met with far more enthusiasm than my offer to join in and sing along with my rendition as Maria.

Every year when the school bell signals the start of the holidays I am always disappointed that Alice Cooper’s “Schools Out For Summer” isn’t played on our PA system but this year it would be pointless.

There will be no celebrations at the local spot where it seems the whole of the educating community congregate, a spot by the sea, to loudly toast the end of the academic year.
No hugs of goodbye, no sharing of summer holiday plans, no giddy talk of sultry far away places.

We are healing, it will take time, but it does feel as if the world is beginning again.

Maybe it will be sooner than we think and we will once again begin to participate and enjoy our “favourite things” and our world really won’t “feel so bad.”

Keep safely smiling and singing,

Joy xxx

(The photo is from a family lockdown Zoom Quiz Night)