I’ve got two teenage kids, and a husband on the ‘highly vulnerable’ list. We’ve all been locked in the house together for almost two months. These are a few things we’ve learned as a result:

·  My extrovert daughter, who we all thought would be climbing the walls by now, has realised her crazy social life was driven mainly by Fear Of Missing Out. Now there’s nothing to miss, she’s loving staying at home. 

·  My son and I have learned, to our delight, that lazing on the sofa watching telly is now considered ‘saving lives’ rather than ‘being bone idle’.

·  We’ve discovered my husband is obsessed with anti-bacterial spray. Unfortunately, we’ve also discovered I’m allergic to it. So, my early Coronavirus-like breathing problems were the ironic result of my husband’s attempts to protect me from Coronavirus.

·  Although we began lockdown in different clothes – my husband in work gear, my daughter in funky dresses, and me in jeans and mumsy tops – after a few months stuck at home not seeing anyone, we’ve all discovered the joys of my son’s ‘gamer uniform’ of baggy joggy bottoms and unwashed t-shirts.

·  We’ve learnt we’re rubbish at online grocery shopping. On the positive side, we’re now the proud owners of a thousand and ten tea bags, eight bunches of bananas and a tomato ketchup bottle so small you can hide it behind an egg cup.

·  The shortage of snacks in the house has turned us into sneaky hoarders. So far, I’ve found Kit Kats hidden in laundry baskets, packets of prawn cocktail crisps stashed behind the printer and a Mars ice cream bar secreted in a Birdseye fishfingers box.

·  Luckily for us, after two months locked down together, and with more on the horizon, our favourite discovery has been how much we all like spending time with each other

Voice of Rachel Hamilton

Rachel Hamilton is an award-winning children’s author from the UK. Her books include The Case of the Exploding Loo and The Case of the Exploding Brains (Simon & Schuster), the Unicorn in New York series (OUP & Scholastic US) and The Falcon Who Found His Wings (Motivate). She is a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge, and has put her education to good use by working in an advertising agency, a senior school, a building site and a men’s prison. Rachel loves to make people laugh, especially when it's intentional rather than accidental.