March 7

I am up early and off with Sian to Sports Day at school.  I leave John to make breakfast for our guests who tell him that breakfast has a high rating on our booking.com page.  We did not know this.

I come home, tired and grumpy. Sian assures me there is plenty of tea and I can watch Poirot to my heart's content. I sit and finish a book I have been reading.  

John says the breakfast went well as they both wanted 'hard' fried eggs.  They have gone off to Matopos for the day. The lady took her partner to see the house they lived in in Richmond and was not impressed.  Richmond, Bulawayo is a far cry from Richmond, London.  They described our house as an oasis.  That's reassuring.

March 6

It's a busy day.  I take my dad to his doctor to give him a more thorough check up.  His right eye has gone black and purple and it looks as though he has been in a big fight.

I am invited to an event at the Art Gallery.  In the invitation, I am referred to as a Woman of Spirit.  This has to be interesting.  However, I can't spend too much time there and end up missing the presentation which highlights certain things going on in Bulawayo, such as Drums of Peace and the Matopos hut painting.

In the afternoon, I have Open Day at school until five o'clock.  When I get home, our guests have arrived.  They are very friendly and chatty; she was born in Bulawayo and left here in 1982. He is English. She says she wants to show him where she grew up and says this will be the last time she visits.  I wonder if people from other countries have this longing to go back home that people in Africa feel?  I once met an elderly French lady who had grown up in Egypt and had left when the King was overthrown.  She told me she had been homesick all her life and I remember at the time thinking how sad that must be.  This are anxious to cancel a booking they have to stay in Matopos, but the internet is playing up and they can't log on.  This is typical; if no one stays, the wi-fi works perfectly.

Sian and her friend go out to youth group.  Ellie and I fall asleep on my bed and John is relegated to sleeping in Ellie's room.  Whatever happened to the wild days of my misspent youth?  I can't get past nine o'clock these days.

March 5

One of the hardest things in life is watching your parents gets old. My dad was a very keen athlete in his younger years, even holding the British schoolboy record for the mile at one time. In his early twenties, he was diagnosed with a condition called ankylosing spondylitis which caused his spine to fuse.  However, despite the doctor's predictions that he would be completely bent over by the time he was forty, my dad has done quite well, although he is stooped over. His sport in many ways saved him.

The last few years have been hard.   He suffers from deep depression and has become very slow and shows little interest in anything.  Towards lunchtime, I get a phone call from Elizabeth to say my dad has fallen over whilst cleaning the pool and has cut his head on the wall.  I go home and find him covered in blood so I take him to an emergency clinic that his doctor recommends.

There, the doctor puts four stitches in his head and two in his arm.  I am not impressed with the way my dad is treated, especially once they have numbed the area.  I find the doctor very rough and quite sloppy during the procedure.

He tells me that if he knew that being a doctor was going to be like this, he would never have become one.  'If I had my life again,' he says, 'I would have done something else.'

'Why is that?' I ask, slightly concerned that this man is stitching up my dad's head whilst telling me he doesn't like his job.

'I thought I was going to get lots of money and drive a nice car.  But I got none of the above.'  He shakes his head. 'None of the above at all.'

'It's the social life,' says the nurse, turning to me with  a resigned expression.  'There's no social life at all.'

'And by the time you get to being a well-respected doctor, you're too old,' continues the doctor.  'Far too old to ski.'

Dad's head is wrapped up in a huge bandage and we leave as soon as possible.  We are told to come back in a week's time to take the stitches out but I am already planning to go somewhere else.

March 4

John has been working flat out, renovating someone's servants' quarters.  'Servants' quarters' sounds like such a colonial description.  In Zimbabwe, they are colloquially referred to as the khaya.  The majority of houses have a khaya in which the maid or gardener, or sometimes both, live. Traditionally, they are cramped, squat, gloomy places with small, high windows and poor ventilation. Working on his own, John has scrubbed the place clean, removing years of dirt, grease and grime, painted it and installed a modern toilet and sink.  At the end of every day, he is really exhausted. 

Sian and I come home late, 7pm, as we were at the inter-house gala at school and find that someone had made a last-minute booking, came to the house, rang the bell, hooted and then gave up and drove away.  They have sent us a biting message through booking.com, saying they are hoping they won't be charged. This is the first time this has happened.  John can't understand why he didn't hear the hooting, especially as it usually sends the dogs nuts and they race down to the gate in a mad frenzy.  I check my phone and see three missed calls.  

We apologise, but secretly we are quite glad we did not have to deal with a guest tonight, we are both so tired.

March 3

The day is overcast and drizzly.  Towards lunchtime, the rain gathers momentum and it rains all afternoon and into the evening.  I pick up Ellie from school and we go home and have a cosy afternoon of reading, writing and making forts.  Ellie used to stay every single afternoon at school until 5pm, but now she has learnt not to sign up for too many things.  Ironically, school has killed her interest in sports she was quite good at, like swimming, because they were too competitive and, to use Ellie's words, 'full of screaming teachers' trying to get the best out of the children.

Zimbabwean schools take sport very seriously.  To a large extent, it has always been that way, but the situation is exacerbated by parents who want value for money.  If their child is at school the entire day, then their money has been well spent.  Playing, reading, leisure time in general, is no longer valued.  In fact, it is almost feared. 'Go and study.' 'Stop playing around.' 'You are a naughty child who just wants to mess around.  Go and sit in your room and read through your books.' One of the girls I teach told me of a friend of hers whose mother gets him up at three o'clock in the morning and sits next to him whilst he studies. 

Sitting at your desk, staring at books, does not, unfortunately, make you a learner.  You can, perhaps, learn to recite a few things off pat, but chances are the information will not stick.  It is hard to explain to many parents, but playing, rolling around in the mud and climbing trees is probably the best thing for your child to be doing.  Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing.  Lie on the grass under a tree and watch the way the shadows fall. How do you explain this to parents who are hoping their children will one day become a doctor and provide them with a one-ticket out of Zimbabwe?

March 2

We have some people arriving on Friday for a week.  They booked a while ago and have sent us numerous emails about the money situation here. I send them a long message, trying to explain our peculiar situation.  We used to use US$ which got replaced by an invented currency called 'the bond'. It is totally worthless, although the government did at one time try to convince everyone that it was on a par with the US$.  It was then made illegal for anyone to trade in the US$, then it was OK for certain businesses, like tourist operators, to charge in foreign currency, and now everyone is back to quoting in dollars, even if payment is made in bond. It's all very complicated!

We receive information from booking.com about the coronavirus. If anyone has recently been to China and they feel unwell, they should self-quarantine for two weeks. I don't find this particularly helpful. I can't imagine what we would do if we had someone stay who suddenly fell ill.  Who is expected to look after them? Can we refuse to accept visitors who have recently been to China? What about the other countries where the virus has spread to? I don't like the fuss concerning the virus purely because I feel it feeds it. Whatever you concentrate on, grows. However, at the same time, one cannot be oblivious to the threat it poses.

March 1

Despite going to bed late last night as we had Ellie's birthday party, I am awake at 6am and spend a quiet hour or two working on my novel, The Dying of the Light.  My trip to Egypt reminded me of the fact that in my heart of hearts, I am a writer.  I love teaching; I enjoy interacting with my classes and all the deep and meaningful discussions we have, but I am not content with only being a teacher.  My second novel, All Come to Dust, is due to be published this year - eleven years after This September Sun.  I cannot, I say to myself, leave it another eleven years before The Dying of the Light is published.  Setting aside the time to write is difficult though when you have a full-time job, two school-going children, an aged parent and you live in Zimbabwe.  I have gone back to waking up early to write.  It's hard at first, but I am always glad I did it.  It gives my day a strong sense of purpose.

Three of Ellie's friends stayed the night last night.  Two of them are picked up on time, but one seems destined to stay here forever.  At last, a brother arrives to fetch her.  It turns out there is no parent at home as both are in South Africa.

I have given up bread for Lent.  How this will help anyone else, I don't know, but hopefully I might lose some weight.  

John finally got the pool sparkling blue and ever since the weather has been grim - cold and grey.  

Sian comes home from Harare where she was taking part in a gala and waterpolo matches.  John actually lights a fire in the grate in the lounge and we watch Murder in Mesopotamia. Poirot has become our family escape.

I am glad no one stayed this weekend.  It was nice to have Ellie's party without walking on eggshells, wondering if we were disturbing anyone. It is nice to relax in our home.

We are all in bed by 8.30pm.