When you are governed by screeching U-turn, it can be hard to remember why decisions made sense, even ones that were only announced a few weeks ago. Prior to schools closing, it was decreed that they were definitely safe, so long as teachers and pupils were regularly tested. I volunteered to help at the secondary school, thinking it would be fun to appal my kids by hallooing them across the busy playground. Only, of course, now the playground is not busy, and there is no hallooing. I am going to school and they’re not. The other day, one of them offered to make me a packed lunch.
The job of lateral flow test administrator is not at all complicated. The teachers register themselves; they read the instructions themselves; they do the test themselves; plus they’re all teachers, so they could probably explain to me how to explain to them what they were supposed to do while they were doing it.
All I have to do is remind them to blow their noses, and decide where to look while people do the swab, pending the arrival of the privacy booths. I find these two things more or less impossible. I always forget about the noses, which must be subconscious. It is unnatural to tell an adult to blow their own nose. It’s like telling them to do a wee before they get in a car. “Aren’t you supposed to remind me to blow my nose?” they often say, when I don’t, and I make like a person who’s genuinely surprised by her own forgetfulness, which in the moment I am, but my id knows better.
The where-to-look conundrum I have yet to solve: I started off turning my back, but that felt rude. Looking straight at them, even ruder. I’ve settled on side-on, staring out of the window, into the middle distance. I’m worried that it looks a bit sombre, like a Russian dissident waiting to be released from prison.
So far, nobody has tested positive, which you can’t read much from – it’s a very small sample – but that doesn’t stop the air-punching triumph of every negative result. It’s like being 25 again, finding out you’re not pregnant, eight times a day.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
