Braithwaite in lockdown by Millie Macqueen

At the moment, in my Cottage things are going quite smoothly….so far. It feels a little weird not really being able to see your friends without a screen in the way. Luckily, everyone in my friendship group has a phone. Almost every day, I try to FaceTime my friend Sophia, to do work, and that is exactly what I did today. This morning I woke up at nine o`clock and heard a knock at the front door. Once I had climbed down from my bunkbed, I rushed to grab my dressing gown to see who it was. Mummy had got there before me - as she woke up waaaay before me - and opened the door to the post man! Well who else would it be? He delivered my clubs and ribbon (for gymnastics) and since I was so excited I whisked them away to the conservatory to disinfect. Whilst they were disinfecting, I made breakfast and got my phone to text on the group chat does anyone want to FaceTime? `Once I had finished off my cereal and wiped the disinfectant off, I got dressed then checked my phone to see if there was a reply. Unfortunately, no-one had so I started my work by myself. I had already got through the maths and suddenly my phone started to buzz. It was Sophia. Trust her to be late! Anyway, I picked up the phone and we happily got on with our work. She told me the reason why she was late; it was because her step sister and brother were leaving today and she thought that she should spend time with them in the early hours of the morning. The maths was pretty easy, even what was supposed to be the hard sheet! After the maths, I did the English which was also easy. All we had to do was: get a highlighter to highlight all the punctuation on the rules of Flutag - German for flight day - and then write a set of instructions on a crazy competition of our choice. EASY! Then we both got on with our afternoon project (even though it was still the morning). After that, we said goodbye and disconnected. Normally, we would have a zoom meeting all five of us but today one wasn’t planned so I played on Roblox for a good half hour. Now, I am about to do a gymnastics session on zoom which is extremely different now we have to do it at home. Apart from the garden, we don’t have enough space and the garden doesn’t have any WIFI signal so if I eventually, successfully do a skill my coach wouldn’t see it. It`s quite strange on zoom as you can hear all the background noise; too many people speak at once and if you want to chat to a friend during the lesson then you have to text. Me and my friend secretly do just that! One thing I really miss is horse riding. It was my happy place. But when the virus struck it stopped because of social-distancing. At first, I didn’t think it would stop that soon because it only needs five people but when lockdown was announced my thoughts were changed rapidly. With horse riding, it`s very different as you can`t really practise unless you have a really big garden and an actual horse. And we don’t have that. Especially a horse! I`m going to have to face that fact that until we`re back to normal circumstances I will have to dream on about smelling manure and sitting on the back of a horse. Some positive things that have happened due to virus are: every Thursday, at 8`o clock, when the clap happens we meet up (obviously two metres apart) with other villagers and whilst we clap we also chat. This is the way that as a family we have met people who we didn’t even realise lived here; we spend more time together as a family and we have been on some fantastic, magical walks that we have never been on before. Another lovely thing that has come out of it, is that the village is nice and quiet as we don’t have any tourists coming to see the beautiful views- but when it is over, they are welcome back. As a way of keeping our community together, another friend of mine who lives here, Emily, has taken on the role of editor to create a village newsletter. If they want, all the children in Braithwaite can contribute to this new way of keeping our spirits up. Emily delivers some of the letters to us then we can distribute them to the elderly members of our small community. I personally think that she is that good that she could become a journalist. I am very lucky to live where I do because I’ve got a garden and it`s not too busy compared to other children who might live in a crowded city.

Millie Macqueen is currently in year 6 and lives in the village of Braithwaite, Cumbria.