My eldest son is ten years old. This was his last year of primary school and he is filled with the anxieties and excitement of transitioning to secondary school. He’s a naturally extroverted individual, like me, but also deeply sensitive and brooding, also like me. Odd that. He’s genuinely struggling with the lockdown - this is a special kind of hell for anyone who is both industrious and extroverted and he is.

I appreciate we need to do this thing right now; we need to make sure the hospitals can cope and that everyone misfortunate enough to be among the small number of people to whom this disease represents a grave threat gets the very best care our NHS can give.

But at the same time, we also need to appreciate that this effort is coming at some cost and once again the burden of our time is falling most heavily on our children. They will be the ones carrying the cost for this in the long run, literally and metaphorically. They are the least impacted by the virus but the most impacted by the lockdown.
 It’s necessary and I hold and hug both my boys every day, but it’s hard to watch.

I took this image during my ‘outside time’ at the beginning of April. Perhaps the upside of this lock down is the chance for fathers to spend more time with their kids now that so many have been forced to stay home but the pain I see in my eldest son’s face is clearly writ here also and my heart goes out to her.