Opinion

Bimpe Archer: Relaxation of lockdown means chaos and ominous feeling we're on our own

Classrooms are ready to welcome back children - but is 'the science' much difference now than it was in March when coronavirus closed our schools?
Classrooms are ready to welcome back children - but is 'the science' much difference now than it was in March when coronavirus closed our schools? Classrooms are ready to welcome back children - but is 'the science' much difference now than it was in March when coronavirus closed our schools?

EVEN without the global pandemic 2020 was always going to be a watershed year for me.

Today marks my last day as the mum of a Bimpette, my buddy trotting alongside me to shops, dog walks and the last minute dash of the school run.

The four-year-old is starting nursery on Monday morning. Impossibly, I will be putting her in a uniform and launching the full-time educational journey of the babiest baby there ever was. (Seriously, with her big, round blue eyes, halo of fair curls and dimpled thighs she was basically the Fairy Liquid baby).

It is a moment of transition unlike when my eldest started nursery. Then I still had a rear-facing car seat and nappy bag. It was one sibling passing on the baton of intensive mothering.

Now, the training wheels are off. It's school gates and lunch money instead of CBeebies and rice cakes - and I'm a little melancholy.

In fairness, there were also a few other differences first time round. For a start I wasn't surrendering my youngest child after the most intensive period of 24/7 mothering since maternity leave.

By that stage I had returned to work and day-to-day care was already unevenly split between myself and my husband, a creche and my parents.

This time it is coming off the back of six months locked in a house with extreme crafting punctuated by abject terror of impending doom.

Back then the biggest problem was the logistics of pick-ups and trying to decide whether or not Breakfast Club was a good idea. (If you're a child of the '80s you understand).

Now, it's trying to work out whether the rising 'R' number and exponential increase in my carefully sequestered family's contact with other people means I'm now more likely to transmit a deadly disease to frail and elderly relatives.

There's no doubt about it, that certainly adds a piquancy to my incipient separation anxiety.

None of this is helped by the lack of hard information coming from the authorities.

Lockdown was a shock, but it also brought a slew of information, and that provided reassurance.

There were daily press briefings where ministers and health officials could be questioned about the nuance of their advice and decisions.

As we all pushed together to suppress the infection rate and reduce the number of deaths it was very clear at every step of the way the purpose of each action being taken and what success would look like.

The relaxation of lockdown has brought chaos and the ominous feeling no-one is actually managing anything.

First there were public disputes at the top of the Executive about its own social distancing regulations for funerals, then unedifying spats over face coverings in shops.

Bars and restaurants were opened, with a date pencilled in - and later rubbed out - for so-called 'wet bars' (me neither), while school doors remained resolutely closed.

As with the implementation of lockdown we were told the decisions for its relaxation are based on 'the science', but unlike then ministers are not detailing what that science is - just presenting us with their final decision. Which they may well reverse a few days later, without any obvious new 'science', but usually following some vocal lobbying.

Children have missed out on almost half a year's schooling, but one can't shake the feeling that they were off for as long as they were because of the persuasive teaching unions - and that they're coming back in the manner which they are because of increasingly insistent parents.

Indeed global studies show little change in the 'science' between the schools' shutdown in March and the announcement of the full return to the classroom this month.

Each stage of lockdown was accompanied by detailed advice about the inherent risks.

One is left with the uncomfortable feeling that,other than some general Covid warnings this week from the health minister, its virtual absence now is because it would be an inconvenient truth.

We truly are on our own.