The Corona Diaries, day#1

The first day of indefinite school closures ... I wrote out our plan for the day on Facebook:

“Gaël up at 3.30 am to start work at 5.00 in a factory of 900. Several of his colleagues have already filled in the form that lets them stay home because they have no alternative childcare. How long will factory stay open? Who knows.
I was up at 5am - woken by Gaël's alarm and a LOT of work to get done today, so aim to do as much as possible before the kids wake up.
Kids alarms are set for 9am for today, until we know a bit more about what school expects of them.
Oliver has a German test to do online, Lou's IT-mad physics teacher has set up the online workspace for the whole school over the weekend, and Tess came home with a batch of worksheets on Friday.
I've got to go out to my accountant's and for cat food (heard no reports about people hoarding cat food - who's thinking about the cats?!)
If the kids get their work done, they're then on gardening duty.
Except it's raining again. Wanted to plant much more in the garden this year in case of financial crisis later on, but the garden centres are shut. Hope the plant man comes to market...
I'm lucky - I'm used to working from home and have kids old enough to look after themselves. Best of luck to everyone else! [Waving to me new home-working colleagues! Put t'kettle on!]"


I've since decided it's probably best to write down how the day went, at the end of the day, so I'm going to try and chronicle it here from day to day.

We muddled through as best we could... the online schooling websites were all overloaded so no one could really log on when they wanted to. 
When I needed to go out, I told the girls they couldn't come with me to the shop as I didn't want to get stared at for dragging kids around a supermarket (and because, well, they shouldn't really be out there!). They came back a few minutes later like this... "Look, we're not kids, look how tall I am/we are. No one will stare!"
Gotta love them!
I managed to get the most important bits of my work done today, got the file to the accountants and got cat food (phew!). The supermarket was very busy but not crazy. People were still smiling.
Still plenty to be done tomorrow but I will hopefully be able to concentrate better then. Things are a bit clearer on the school work front and I don't need to go out all day. In fact, following this evening's announcements we're not really allowed to go out at all, except for food or to the doctor's. Not for the next fortnight at least.
It's going to be mighty fun! Already today, the internet was on a real go-slow. If all the neighbours are home-working too, they need to know that it's MY internet in the daytime! They only usually use it in the evening!
I've got a few projects on the go until early April and we'll see what happens that. Gaël still has to work, but we'll see how long that lasts as Peugeot (who they supply) are closing all their factories for a couple of weeks. 
It all feels a bit weird but we've just got to roll with it ... at 3:30 this afternoon, there wasn't a single loaf or baguette in the bread shop, half the village shops (the non-food shops) were closed and it really did feel very, very eerie.