April 27

The council water is on and it tastes disgusting.  I wonder if they don't deliberately put so many chemicals in it that no one will drink it.

Today we have to face the strong possibility that schools will not open next week as they are due to and that we will be teaching, and learning, online.

For us, as a family, this presents numerous challenges.  The obvious one is the Internet which is not only erratic at times, but also very costly.  If Sian, Ellie and I are all online for hours at a time, we are going to eat up a lot of megabytes.  I will also have to divide my time between teaching my pupils and helping to teach my children.  Sian will be OK, but Ellie will need some supervision.  The thought of spending hours on the net is not an inviting one.

Home-schooling accentuates the divides between people quite considerably.  For the majority of children in Zimbabwe, the idea of using even Whatsapp for communicating with their teacher is far beyond their families' capabilities to provide.  It is more than likely that they will miss valuable months of learning and do nothing besides sit at home.  Even those children at private schools will struggle.  Not everyone has wi-fi at home and not everyone has access to their own laptop or ipad.

At Ellie's school, competition has already begun to see who is most prepared for online learning.  Some parents are rushing out and buying each of their children a laptop.  No doubt they will soon be launching their own satellite in space and connecting to NASA. Some have set up special rooms in their houses, constructed rigid timetables that WILL be followed and even devised a system of merits and demerits that will be announced at the once a week 'home assembly'.  It is, of course, very necessary to keep that competitive spirit alive whilst rugby is out of the question.

I wonder what will happen to all the carpark mothers who gather every morning in their spandex and gold jewellery to discuss all the things the teachers are not doing to help their children's learning difficulties, behavioural problems or inability to pay attention for more than half a second.  Perhaps they'll form their own Zoom group.  I'm glad I'll have other things to do.

April 26

On my publisher's advice, I set up a Bookbub account to promote my books.  This involves linking the kindle version of This September Sun with Bookbub.  For the first time in a very long time, I have a look at readers' reviews of This September Sun.  I used to look at them almost every day, revelling in the positive ones and writhing in agony over the negative ones.  I have on more than one occasion wanted to contact the reviewer to give them a piece of my mind.

Writing a book is no mean feat and, perhaps especially in the case of fiction, it is very personal.  It is not just the hours that go into writing the book, but it's the anguish: the lying awake at night planning what happens next, the rewriting of a scene or a chapter, the times when you cannot think of one thing to say, when you just feel like giving it all up.  When someone criticises your novel, it's like listening to a tirade of abuse from your child's teacher, being told how stupid or limited they are. It's not something you take lightly.

Of course, the person on Amazon doesn't know me at all; they are just expressing their opinion which they are free to do.  However, there are some comments that annoy me, such as 'no mention of wild animals' or 'very narrow in its coverage of life in Zimbabwe' or, the best yet, 'I had hoped to learn more about Mugabe from reading this book and I was very disappointed.'  Comments like this only serve to show the narrowness of Western perceptions of life in Africa.  Any book set on the continent must include the roar of lions, wildebeest striding majestically across the plains or poverty, famine and slum life.

These are the things that Western readers might look for and expect, but this is not the only side to life in Africa.  The very point of This September Sun was to capture the narrowness of colonial life and also to show how much our lives were shaped by British culture.  There may be dust, but there are also gardens stocked with English flowers; there may be poverty, but this is also structure; there may be hunger, but there are also beautiful tree-lined streets, roads named after long-dead British prime ministers, poets and empire builders, and parks, museums and art galleries.  Africa is not paused interminably in the world of Isak Dinesen but nor is it the Africa of Things Fall Apart.  We are a mixture of so many things and this is what our literature needs to strive to depict: the shades of reality, not one fixed and ultimately flawed, view.

April 25

Elizabeth is not happy.  Elizabeth wants to go to church, but cannot because of the lockdown.

'This government,' she laments. 'Even Mugabe let us go to church.'

I try for the umpteenth time to explain the reason for the lockdown.

'Ah, madam, you don't really believe it, do you?  They are saying someone can cough on you and then you die.  I don't believe it.  People often have colds and they don't die.'

I don't really know how to reply because, to be honest, we haven't had infection figures anywhere near suggestive of a pandemic.  Could it be that the climate, the lack of pollution and a younger population than Europe has meant that this virus will not take off in the same way in Africa that it has in countries such as Spain and Italy?  On the other hand, we could just be lagging behind.  Winter is still to come and maybe we will see a sudden surge in cases.  It's hard to know, but it's best to keep safe.

Elizabeth glares at me crossly as though I personally have given orders for the lockdown.  Her other grievance is that my dad is sweeping up leaves on the drive.  Khulu, as she refers to him, should be sitting on his throne, waited on hand and foot.  I have tried to explain to her that my dad needs something to do and he needs to feel useful.  He cannot spend the whole day sitting in his chair.  Last week she berated me because she said my dad needs a bigger mug for his tea. Why he can't have one the same size as the rest of us is not clear, except that he is Khulu and, being Khulu, he must have a bigger mug.

Dad speaks to Elizabeth in chilapalapa.  When he worked on the mines in South Africa in the late 1960s, he learnt to speak Fanagalo which is a mixture of Zulu, English and Afrikaans and chilapalapa is very similar  It is now largely not considered politically correct to speak it, but I don't think either Elizabeth or my dad is aware of that and, as it provides an opportunity for them to chat and have a laugh, I really don't see that it is a problem. When Eunice comes to work - she hasn't been for six weeks - she, Elizabeth and my dad have long conversations that usually end in shrieks of laughter.  What can be bad about that?

April 24

I am hoping to finish a proofreading course I have been doing by the end of the school holidays.  I am halfway through and must admit I did not know it was going to involve so much work.  However, with the cottage not being operational and the terrific rate of inflation in Zimbabwe, our finances are a little dire so it would be great to be able to earn some money by doing proofreading.

Nearly three years ago, we went to the Honde Valley for a couple of days and whilst we were driving along, we saw a little sign on the side of the road next to a hut, advertising dried fruit for sale.  We stopped and asked if we could buy some and were told in true Zimbabwean style that it had finished, but they did have coffee for sale.  We bought some beans which have sat in a container on the shelf in the kitchen ever since.  However, with all this time on his hands, John has very diligently sat and, with a little help from all of us, shelled the beans.  He googled roasting coffee beans and read that they should be roasted within three months of picking so we did not hold out much hope for them.  However, today he roasted them in the oven and we had a truly delicious cup of coffee.  I felt like I was in a cafe in Paris.  All we needed were the croissants which I hinted at considerably but had to be content with a Lobels chocolate cream.

April 23

Today is Shakespeare's birthday, although there is some question over this - and the day he died.  It is also St. George's Day, but there is hardly anything about this on the news or social media.  It is not PC to be proud of being English.

John goes off to work on his favourite Wolseley.  A few days ago, he disputed the fact that he can do whatever he wants, but I am continually hounded by Sian and Ellie if I try and squirrel myself away somewhere on my own.  He insists this is my doing and that I should be more strict.  When he announces he will be working on the car for a few hours, the response is:

'Enjoy yourself, Dad.'

'Have a wonderful time.  Take as long as you like.  As long as you are happy, dear father, we are happy, too.'

OK, this might be a slight exaggeration, but he certainly never gets accused of not spending enough time with them, neglecting them in their early childhood years or driving them to become drug addicts or alcoholics in later life.  I continually remind Sian and Ellie that Enid Blyton saw her two children for an hour a day when they were allowed to have tea with her.  Otherwise, they weren't allowed near her.  Agatha Christie toured the world when her daughter was very young and left her in the care of her mother and sister.  When she joined her husband on archaeological digs, her daughter was at boarding school so she could be gone for months at a time.

I decide we are going to have a morning of gardening and that this is a perfect way of spending time with my otherwise bored children.  However, as soon as I mention the idea, it's amazing how quickly both of them find something else to do.  I start on my own, clearing the flower beds and digging up old roots.  Ellie joins me and then Sian eventually does, having spent about half an hour doing some mysterious. but apparently vital, exercises to keep herself fit.  

The sun is hot, but it is a lovely day and we plant quite a few succulents.  We try to fill up the spaces in the flowerbeds.  It is going to be hard work without any water, but we do recycle all our bath and kitchen water so there some to go around.

In the afternoon, the girls make a cake by blending a whole lot of biscuits, adding baking powder and milk and then baking it in the oven. It comes out really nicely and so we have a reading hour: cake, tea and a book.  What could be a better way to spend an afternoon?

April 22

As I said a couple of weeks ago, my email has been inundated with coronavirus advice from all sorts of sources.  Lately, I have received a number of messages from CIMAS (my dad's medical aid) with exercises to do at home to build up immunity. I suppose they are afraid they will be inundated with bills from hospitals should the virus take off.

Econet sends a phone message to ask us all to donate money to buy equipment and protective wear for hospital staff.  Sorry, Econet.  You take too much of our money anyway.  You could probably afford to renovate every single hospital in the country so don't come begging.  It really annoys me that so many people see Econet's owner, Strive Masiyiwa as some sort of demi-god, when he is a man who has made money out of poor people. If I was to meet him, my first question would be why do you live in England?

The funniest message I have received to date is from Ecobank:

Dear Customer, in need of urgent help during the lockdown?  Call us toll-free on ... OR call your Branch Manager/Relationship Manager.

I feel like phoning and telling them that I can't find any decent wine that I can afford.  I wonder if they would agree to a wine loan? Or perhaps I'll tell them that I have locked myself in the toilet and can't get out.

What on earth is a relationship manager?  The branch manager of Ecobank is the last person I would approach with a relationship problem.  She looks like she could do ten rounds with the current boxing heavyweight champion.  I can't imagine calling her and saying: 'The romance has gone from our relationship.  We just don't talk any more.'  Nor can I imagine her suggesting candlelit dinners and time together to rekindle any old feelings of passion.

Ah, Ecobank.  My first and only love.

April 21

It is the second day of our two week extension of the lockdown.  Sian and Ellie are getting bored and I can't blame them.  The worst thing is that we will likely go straight from a lockdown situation into school, but both of them are looking forward to seeing friends and Sian is really longing to see 'her' horse, Hercules.

They have been very good together and there have hardly been any arguments between them at all.  When I say this to them, they look embarrassed.

'No, we don't get on well,' says Ellie.

'We are always arguing,' says Sian.

They have read a lot and become very good at roof tennis and they have also learnt how to knit.  They have planted their own vegetable seedlings, painted, tried to train the dogs (a complete failure), cleared and cleaned out their rooms, baked, cooked, played the piano and the violin and done holiday homework.

We have also played numerous board games.  Usually, after lunch we play Scrabble with my dad and in the evening we might play UNO, Cluedo, Time Flies, Skyjo or Monopoly.  

We have even come up with a couple of songs.  One is called 'Famous Five - The Musical' and the other is 'The Cluedo Rap'.

'The Cluedo Rap' goes something like this:

Doctor Black

Invited his homies to his shack (wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki, wiki)

How did he know

He'd get a dagger in his back? (wiki, wiki, wiki.  Wiki, wiki, wiki)

Has Colonel Mus-tard

Put poison in the cus-tard? (wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki, wiki)

Has Professor Plum

Got a dagger up his bum? (wiki, wiki, wiki.  Wiki, wiki, wiki)

Is Miss Scar-let

A bit of a uh har-lot? (wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki, wiki)

And why is Doctor Or-chid

Lookin' pretty aw-kward? (wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki, wiki)

We definitely have too much time on our hands.