School pick up time

Back on the school run:  the head of the queue, waiting to go into the playground at Eben's school at 3 this afternoon (a couple of Dads feature in the extra).

I got an apologetic phonecall from Ruth this morning, explaining that she and Josh had had late notice of a work meeting this afternoon. Could I pick Eben up from school? 

We'd already agreed to go back to some form of 'childcare bubble with extra precautions' from the end of this week, having had our jabs 3 weeks ago. So we said yes.

Richard and I picked him up together.  We were all a bit overwhelmed I think, not having seen each other face to face much since Christmas.  We brought Eben back to our house; he immediately slotted into his familiar routines, checking out the particular rooms, toys, books etc that have been his favourites on previous visits.  We were all 'touching base' in a very literal sense. When the time came to drive him back to his house for his tea, he got a bit tearful. But fortunately we already had a plan for him to come and stay overnight on Friday, so this was quickly resolved with a bit of joint looking ahead to that next visit.
We'll just have to see how it goes, with the bubbling. Sheffield Covid numbers have dropped a long way; currently the trends are all encouraging. What may come with the latest new variants, who can say; we may have to back off from the bubble again, or we may be looking ahead to more step-by-step easing of restrictions.  Living with that sense of underlying uncertainty has now become utterly, utterly familiar.