County Clare 2020: A Day in
My Life
Creative Writing Competition for children and teenagers
Shortlisted 13 to 15 category
County Clare 2020: A Day in My Life
by Aidan Kelly
Dear future children (maybe),
I have been in lockdown since March 13th, so it has been 6 weeks since quarantine started exactly. I felt... concerned when I heard school was shutting down. Will we have to make up for the lost days during the summer? Will we be doing school at home? Will teachers relax the work because we are all stuck inside and suffering cabin fever with this virus? That is all that was going through my head. All these concerns washed away when I got the answers. We will not make up the days during the summer. School will be conducted online. Teachers have relaxed the work as they are focusing on the LC. The JC has been cancelled.
I miss a few of my friends and doing stuff with them. Unimportant things like going to the shop, playing volleyball, basketball, or soccer at break. Just messing around in general. I do not miss getting up at half 8 in the morning, that is for sure!
My biggest highlight so far would be getting the computer I am currently using. I cannot wait to play games with my friends on this beast of a machine! The most demanding thing would be to get me motivated to do anything except procrastinate.
I have not learnt much about myself during this experience, except how little my life changes without the important things getting in the way. If you remove the pastimes, hobbies, and school, you just have long relaxing hours, where you can learn a new skill, or do schoolwork or exercise your ass off, or in my case, procrastinate ‘til kingdom come, while doing the bare minimum for school. Just enough schoolwork to look like a goody-two-shoes to all the people who completely ignore the work, and yet somehow not enough so you look lazy to the actual goody-two-shoes and teachers.
My family has stayed the same since lockdown started. My dad had only started working from home less than two weeks before the lockdown, and he works in the bio-medical technology sector, so he is safe. My mom does the same jobs as before, but she gets help with yardwork. That is the only thing that has changed – yardwork. We have done so much of it over the past 6 weeks, we might as well have a new house. Painting the decking, power washing paths, painting and power washing walls, barges, and gables, moving humongous logs into the shed, just general suffering. On top of this, mom made me cycle or run daily. I cycled because it was easier. But with the extra yardwork, she has let me off as far as the cycling is concerned.
My friends are the same as me, except with better time management skills. I will remember the time spent with my friends, the PC, or the jobs the most. Maybe even reading the news bulletins off the TV, or the rising cases, or the eventual crescendo of them to 0. You do not really know what you will remember until the experience is over. I might do something cringy (like I always do), and that will be the only memory coming out of this. I will never know until the end.
Speaking of the end, this is all from my letter. I hope I do not catch this deadly disease, or anyone I know. It has a 10% death rate, one of the worst death rates coming from a coronavirus (yes, coronavirus is the name given to all respiratory viruses, look it up. It should really be called coronaviruses or something to show it is more than one virus, but its ok).
<< Competition Winners, Commended & Shortlisted