June 23

Today, I make a mental list of all the things I am grateful to the lockdown for.

Number one has to be not having to get out of bed in the cold and the dark to get ready for work.  Secondly, being able to get up and have the time to do a bit of yoga has been great; it is the best way to start the day.  Similarly, I am also able to go for a walk early in the morning, although we generally go in the afternoon.  I do love early morning walks though and that feeling of freshness and newness about them.

I have also enjoyed Sian, Ellie and I working together every morning and being able to help them with their schoolwork - well, some of it anyway.  They don't ask me for help with maths any more.

While we are on the topic of maths, here is a little thing that annoys me about Americans - why do they say math?  It annoys me so much, I struggle to listen to YouTube videos that Sian watches, explaining quadratic equations and the like, because I cannot move beyond that one word.  The video has finished by the time I have stopped ranting about math.  It just sounds so wrong, like when people talk about their trouser instead of their trousers or their short instead of their shorts.  And it's towards, not toward and forwards, not forward. I just want to follow them around hissing 'ssssss' until they say it properly. Please, America, you have messed up the world enough without having to obliterate poor defenceless 's' sounds.

Fourth on my list is that the work I am getting is easier to mark because pupils use spell check and I don't have to contend with bad handwriting.

Fifth is that I don't have to do afternoon activities or wait at school until Sian has finished waterpolo or swimming.  I have been able to spend more time in the garden and with my dad who gets a bit lonely with no one here during the day.

One of the best things for me is having more time to write and I have made great progress on my third novel, The Dying of the Light.  Two years ago, I was a recipient of the Miles Morland Scholarship.  I received a certain payment every month in return for writing 10 000 (a month).  It was hard work indeed, made considerably more difficult by the fact that i started a new job in the same year and my mum died tow months after the scholarship began.

I have spent the last few months editing what I have already written, adding some new stuff and bringing it all together.  It is the fastest I have ever worked.