If I had had to live with my mum, we would have killed each other, no need for a virus

As a topical cartoonist, he dealt with his own pessimism and despair about the news by making jokes about it. I don’t think that was about being in denial — rather, a form of resignation: the world is full of pain; if we cannot find a way lampoon it, then the pain is unbearable.

For me, writing helps. If I keep my thoughts trapped inside my head, I could easily go mad. Putting them onto the page at least turns the valve a fraction to release some of the pressure. That said, I’m supposed to be working on my next novel, a family comedy-drama set in 2020, and it now feels ridiculous and irrelevant. Do I abandon it and write something else? I couldn’t write a dystopian novel. I hate books that leave me feeling worse at the final page than I did at the beginning.

I don’t like contrived happy endings either, but I would never leave readers down in the abyss. Life is hard enough; I want a novel to offer at least a glimmer of hope. Maybe I’ll recast my novel to the 1970s, when I was a kid and just skipping round the corner to the sweet shop for a packet of Jelly Tots and The Beano could fill me with happiness.

My son has been sent a timetable from school to follow but already the distance learning software has crashed (given how little work he seems to be doing, I don’t think he can personally be blamed for the overload). As his GCSEs are now not happening, it’s hard for him to see the necessity of revising, say, Physics, when a) he’s not planning to do it for A-Level, and b) he hates it. I try to say the kind of things I think I would say if I were a proper, grown-up parent instead of a child inexplicably trapped in the body of a middle-aged woman.

“It’s good to give yourself some kind of routine,” I say.

“Shouldn’t you be working on your novel, Mum?” he responds. “You do know that most normal people work nine to five, right?”

I’m used to “working” from home, but it usually involves a lot of breaks. Sometimes, the breaks get carried away, and the work happens in very short bouts in between, but it’s fine because no-one else is witnessing it. Now I have a teenage hall monitor policing my every foray into the kitchen:
“Mum, what are you doing? You just made yourself a tea ten minutes ago.”

He’s tough on me, but I’m reluctant to be too strict with him. We’ve inadvertently wandered onto the set of a horror film; now is not the time to nag him to revise for exams that aren’t even happening. If he gets some comfort from talking to his friends and watching daft videos on YouTube, is that so terrible?

But I do want to do something, anything at least slightly productive. We’ve had our daily walk, leaping into the road frequently to avoid breaching the two-metre buffer zone (Why does no-one else move? Are they getting different guidance?).

We keep a lookout for weird sightings. Yesterday, a woman wearing a paper mask while driving on her own. Today, two people talking through their open windows, having parked right alongside in the local church car park. They are less than one metre apart — they might as well get out and sit at either end of the nearby bench and at least enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. We agree that supplies of stupidity are clearly not yet running low.

We abandon ship on the work front and decide to make chocolate chip cookies instead. I tell myself that I am teaching him vital cooking skills, even though that would be more credible if I were demonstrating chicken soup or a pasta sauce. He hasn’t wanted to bake with me since he was about seven, painstakingly placing chocolate buttons on the top of a cake in a (sort of) pattern.

He weighs the ingredients and does the mixing, while I coo encouragement as if he is indeed seven again and, in a wonderfully short time, the house is filled with the incredible smell of melting chocolate and vanilla.

We let them cool just enough so that we can pick them up then we lay into them with cups of tea. Let’s find crumbs of comfort where we can.