Thursday photo #306

The funny thing about writing a regular weekly post is how much you notice the changes. What a different place the UK is from a week ago. With schools closing on Friday, most of us are becoming home educators. We are incredibly lucky that the children’s school are setting work online. They’ve also provided a suggested timetable, which is a great way to keep some structure to their days and mine.

The singing competition

Saturday suddenly seems like a really long time ago. After much speculation, the singing competition that Libby was due to take part in went ahead. She was in a similar competition last year and they gave out medals for first, second and third place. In Libby’s category last year, there were several children from various different school years. Between the two categories that she took part in, all the children got a medal except for Libby. She was disappointed, but it didn’t put her off.

Libby has worked hard at her singing this year. She doesn’t have perfect pitch like Lia seems to, but she does have a naturally loud voice. We’ve noticed that, particularly when accompanied by the piano, Libby’s pitch has really improved. The competition required all the children to sing a song from a musical. When I heard Libby sing, I was quite surprised at how much her singing had improved compared to the last time I heard her. But the other children were good as well, excellent in fact. And this time there were only medals for first and second place. I felt quite nervous for her. Had she done enough to be considered for a medal this time?

It turned out she had, in fact she won. The girl who came second was a friend from her class too. They were both delighted, as was their singing teacher. Better still, the prize for winning wasn’t just a medal this time, but a lovely big trophy. Libby was so happy and it more than made up for last year. Sadly, both girls were supposed to be participating in another singing competition this weekend that has now been cancelled. Lia is gutted that she won’t have the chance to win a trophy.

A bleak outlook

Everything feels strangely bleak at the moment. We all face such uncertainty and working freelance is a real worry. Like most people, work has gone incredibly quiet for me. I’m very lucky that blogging isn’t my only income, however my other income stream is also freelance. I think there will be tough times ahead for us as a family, but I know we are in a stronger position than many others.

If you are struggling or likely to end up in financial difficulties, please do bear in mind that banks are allowing people to have three month mortgage holidays if they need them as a result of the pandemic. We can only follow government guidelines and hope that this whole thing doesn’t go on for too long. I hope you and yours are coping.

Thursday photo #306

I took a quick photo before the singing competition. I don’t have one of the girls together afterwards, Lia was hoping to wait until after her competition. She was hoping to get a medal too.