It's my blog and I will grumble if I want to: The Corona Chronicles 3

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I'm sitting here on a Saturday night, looking down the barrel of week two of home learning with DB1. She's a good girl, even though she reserves any bad behaviour for me alone, and sometimes her father, and our nanny, if she's really feeling like sharing the love. But I should not grumble, (although grumbling is something I will return to later) as home learning has been OK so far, even though it was hard to keep up her motivation on day four or five, the weekend came just in time to give her a long enough break that I feel OK about tackling it again tomorrow.

To set the scene of what it's like here as I sit writing this: In Italy, they have been playing glorious renditions of folk songs or opera to each other from their balconies during their confinement. Here, in our development, in a northern suburb of Dubai, to celebrate the healthcare workers and also, today, Earth Hour, various neighbours have been sort of loudly groaning and playing what sounds like a vuvuzela.

I started writing this last weekend, before things got really, serious, before we were were told we shouldn't leave the house except to go to the supermarket or to carry out "essential" work, and then we cannot go out at all from 8pm to 6pm unless we apply for a permit to do so while government workers carry out nationwide street sterilisation.

So I took DB2 on one of her nap walks, as she has always slept better in a moving buggy or car, and although the officially declared cases were and still are tiny in number compared to the most badly affected countries, there was a quiet sense of unease in the air that something is out there waiting to get us.

That sounds melodramatic, but while it was not supernaturally quiet, it was certainly more silent than usual. The complex where we live can be a noisy old place. We are next to a six, or is it seven lane highway? I've lost count. We are close to Dubai International Airport (DXB) so reasonably low flying jets are ordinarily our constant companions, but the flights were already drastically reduced in number, and stopped altogether now, except for the odd evacuation flight and cargo. Lorries usually beep away as they deliver to the small supermarket across the street from us. The call to prayer is sometimes absent now as the prayers are temporarily taking place in people's homes as one of many measures taken to curb the spread of this s***ing awful virus.

I watched the road for a minute or so as DB2 slept, and I would say about one out of every three vehicles on them was a delivery motorbike of one kind or another. I saw a taxi driver frantically tapping his monitor, presumably desperate for a fare, any fare, to appear on the screen, and another driver, this time for our local equivalent of Uber, Careem, sitting idle, presumably doing the same.

A couple weeks ago, I caught a taxi back from a doctor's appointment. I usually try to chat to them as they do not get paid high salaries which can be a challenging way to live in Dubai, and let's just say a lot of people are not that nice to them. The driver on that day had recently left a job as an electrician to be a driver, because it was a jump up in salary.

"How's that going?"

"It was OK," he said. "Then corona destroyed it."

At the time of writing, taxis are still allowed to operate, but I imagine most of them are experiencing similarly difficult circumstances as the friendly driver I met on that day, which was only a couple of weeks ago, but doesn't it now seem like a century ago?

To return to the subject of "mustn't grumble", I am seeing a lot of delightful memes about how blessed we all are to have this time with our families, and how many, many people are in worse situations than those of us who can afford to stay home in order to protect their families from Covid-19, and so on. And then there are the people who I am starting to think of as the enforcers, who are on every single Facebook community group, lecturing people about how they should stay at home and like it, and that they are basically selfish individuals if they express any desire to leave the house or any kind of dissatisfaction with this confinement so many of us are now experiencing.

I want to make it abundantly clear that I am abiding by the stay at home rules, I have not left the house except to occasionally stick my head out the door for fresh air or go to the supermarket for groceries, since the restrictions came into place. But, I find the level to which some people seem to be relishing this experience, relishing the need to stay on their sofas in their pants watching Netflix, and what's more, relishing threatening to report people to the authorities if they believe they are not complying to the absolute letter to the rules, maddening. I have had to leave most of the local community groups I mentioned above because they were depressing the heck out of me, which is a shame because they are useful for community news and updates and answers to the occasional thorny kid-related issue that arises during my somewhat haphazard parenting. It is the glee, I tell you, the absolute glee, that they say they are going to call the police that really sickens me, even more so than the act of calling the police itself.

And, of course I am happy having some more time with DB1 and DB2, particularly as I started getting back into work when the littlest one was nine months, (which is actually pretty good by UAE standards, as many women end up going back to work when their babies are just 45 days old, but that's another story) and it has been super hard having to head into work and leave her with the nanny some days, particularly as she has had a rough time with infections at certain points. And it will be even nicer when Him Indoors is working from home next week.

But I feel regret that what was becoming a quite a nice portfolio of freelance work has basically evaporated over night, and this home learning businesses means that I am not exactly flush with time to source new projects.

We live in such a flippin' binary world these days. I bore Him Indoors about this regularly, but it seems anathema to so many that one can feel two things at the same time, a trend that I attribute to social media, as people who hold the opposing view to you will quite happily make threats to your family or tell you that you are a cretin, having never even heard of you minutes earlier, never mind know anything about you.

Again, of course I am observing the rules the government has put in place to stop the virus ravaging the country and overwhelming the healthcare system the way it has elsewhere, but I still regret the economic impact, the colleagues who have lost jobs, been scaled down to three days per week, lost countless freelance projects, and the impact on the wider economy which could be felt for years, and the many, many thousands, millions, worldwide who will more than likely lose their jobs, and the impact on their families.

I particularly regret the schools closure, and the need to keep children away from their friends. Frankly, it is cruel, expecting a child who spends most of her days with a class of 24 kids to suddenly be content with just her parents and a nanny as her entire social circle. Again, I know why it has been done, but that does not stop me feeling sad for DB1, particularly when I saw the look on her face when she saw all her friends in a Zoom call that one of the parents of a classmate set up, and when I see the struggle to concentrate on lessons with me clumsily attempting to guide her through phonics, repeatedly having to Google "digraphs", instead of the highly trained professional who had been helping her thus far.

I know why these tight curfews are in place, I have seen what the virus has done elsewhere, but frankly, it sucks being confined. Anyone who has ever sought any kind of help for any kind of mental health issue will tell you is that one of the first things the professionals tell you is that if you are feeling low, you need sunlight, you need fresh air, you need endorphins from exercise to help you. Staying inside, away from natural light, away from fresh air, watching endless TV, or playing endless video games, or whatever, is the last thing that will help, and I fear for what will happen to many of us should this continue for more than a few weeks.

I know millions and millions of people all over the world are in similar situations, but I am drawing a line under "mustn't grumble". I will flippin' well grumble if I feel like it, thanks very much, because this situation is unprecedented, it is awful, and frankly, it would be weird if we did not feel stressed to the eyeballs about it for at least a 30 per cent of our waking hours.

So, my dearest readers, you have it on my authority, it is OK to grumble, it is OK to love being with your kids more but feel you could happily crack open the wine by 10am to get through another day of teaching the little blighters. It is OK to worry about keeping your job but also feel relieved to not have to do your horrible commute, and be away from your highly strung boss. I absolve you. Grumble away, I know I will be for as long as this extended nightmare goes on, and getting through about 100 times my usual Dairy Milk consumption, which was pretty high anyway.