Alison
Alison has two children, one in year 2 and one in year 5. Alison is a university lecturer in education and digital technologies. She works part time and the summer term is usually quite quiet, so that has helped her manage at home.
Alison sits at a table lit by the window whilst the rest of the room is in shadow. The table is now a place for craft and home schooling.
Alison sits in a chair in the bedroom where she does her own work, it is by the window and she has her laptop on her knee.
“Being in Lockdown has brought to the fore physical, the materiality of space definitely. Partly in a good way. It’s meant we have gone through our space quite thoroughly and made space, but also lost some space because we’re constantly in the space. So, I mean physical space is a real factor in the experience of Lockdown.
I think we’ve actually done really well given we live in a very small, it’s a three-hundred-year-old cottage which is tiny, beautiful but tiny. I’m not sure that Lockdown has given me much in the way of emotional space. I still have to set aside me and what I feel like I definitely need.
You know, the transition the kids have had to go through is pretty extreme actually, and they’ve managed it on the surface really, really well, but it’s really hard to know kind of what the lingering effects are of a complete shifting of their lives. I think they’re probably on the edge of being ages where it’s alright.
My daughter’s ten and I think if she was a few years older it would’ve really, really hurt. I mean she desperately misses her friends but we have very quickly leapt into the world of video calls and chat functions and email and she’s had the ability to do that.”