Big Mother – Watching You

Lockdown once more and I’ve had to move my 12-year-old son so he’s in the same room as me, whilst he ‘home schools’. It seems that tinkering with the parental controls, blocking YouTube and his favourite gaming sites have not been fool proof enough. Big Mother needs to be watching him… 

At first, I felt somewhat resentful about this. I’m a writer and I already work from a cramped bedroom (so I’m not particularly a fan of Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’. She wasn’t brought up in a Coronation Street style terraced street in Manchester, now was she?) But then I began to feel sorry for the little chap. It’s been hard going for him this last year. Not only has he been deprived of all real-time friendships, but he misses his grandparents dreadfully, along with karate, scouts, choir and the those tiny acts of childhood subversion – such as spending his school bus money on a tube of Pringles from the Co-op.

So, the resentment quickly melted into parental guilt and anxiety and I thought that I’d at least try and make a snug little workspace for him. It did mean though, that he’d have to sit only a yard away from me, with his laptop perched on a wonky shelf and his legs contorted into a space down the end of the bed. No mean task when you’ve grown about a foot in the last 9 months of lockdown.

I moved my stacks of books and the overflowing ‘To Do’ and ‘Filing’ trays. I dusted away a year’s worth of accumulated filth and ensured there were no spiders at the end of the bed – although that was more for their safety than for his (the things that boys will do when bored during an online maths lesson). And then I called him in.

“Look!” I said. “Sitting next to me in lesson time really won’t be as bad as you think!”

“Wow,” he replied. “You cleaned something.”

“Exactly. I don’t even clean for myself. But you? You’re worth it. Now – see… you just squeeze in here. I’ve put that lovely big pillow there for you to rest up against when you’re feeling weary and when you need to stretch. And here’s your headphones. And I’m lending you my special wireless mouse – see? And here’s your sippy cup…”

He interrupted me with a raised eyebrow;

“Er,” I said “I mean your drinking-glass thingy. Now – I want this to be a really nice space for you. I mean – education isn’t the be all and end all, but one day you’ll have a job and a proper workspace of your own, and we might as well start as we mean to go on. So – is there anything else that I can do to make it more pleasant for you?”

He thought for a minute and then said;

“A nice vase of flowers would be splendid, dear.”

I get the impression that in a few years’ time, this kid would be best not thinking of applying for jobs in the corporate world.