Friday Headlines
the weekly newsletter from EHS
Life in Lockdown by Lujayn
20 January 2021
Although we have only been in our latest lockdown for a couple of weeks, our students have been very busy already and we are pleased to showcase some of their work. Zahra Al-Ani has painted the beautiful mountain scene shared in the gallery at the bottom of this article. Both Lujayn and Zahra have been attending online Karate classes to keep themselves active, and Lujayn discusses her lockdown activities in the article below.
On Monday 4th January, Boris Johnson announced that, yet another, national lockdown was to take place, ordering the closure of schools across the country. With both our opportunity to meet with family and friends and to study in school being, once again, stripped away, along with many others, I was distraught. Nonetheless, I entered the Spring term with hope, promising myself to make the most of this extra time we would now have at home and it was not until writing this article that I was able to fully appreciate how much myself and others have managed to achieve in the past couple of weeks.
After lessons had begun, I found my days overrun with electronic devices and screens, so in an attempt to step away from technology and take a break, I was inspired to reignite my love for reading. I consequently found myself lost in the literary world, drawn into alternate realities of action and drama. It was a great relief to experience the turning of a physical page and even smell the aroma of a new book, engaging the normally unemployed senses when using computers and tablets. I was able to squeeze in even more pages between lesson changeovers, a time that would customarily be designated to simply walking to a classroom and have since been able to finish two novels, also something that, alongside study, would usually prove very difficult. For many others, relaxation has been found in the form of art, relishing the opportunity to unwind, after a tiresome day of remote learning, to music whilst immersing themselves in the tranquillity of the images they create.
A few days into term, I felt myself falling into a comfortable rhythm, waking up for registration, attending my lessons, reading, relaxing, sleeping and yet I still felt something was missing. It wasn’t until I received a message from my Karate teacher, about online lessons, that I realised what; exercise! Surprisingly, I gladly agreed to switch up my routine with an hour’s session of sports each week and coupled with regular family workouts with Joe Wicks, I felt a missed sense of exhilaration as I engaged my body. After speaking with some friends, it seems I am not alone in missing these activities, with many others going out for daily walks and some, even striving to complete a ‘Couch to 5K’ regime.
It is also, during this time at home, that I have been able to be with my family more than ever, a great opportunity, I have found, to beat them all in game nights of scrabble, countdown, and crystal maze! The surprising amount of snow that fell, earlier this year, was also a perfect excuse to be outdoors, sculpting snowmen and igloos and of course battling each other in snowball fights!
As I began to write about my time in lockdown so far, I found myself reminded of the Janet Jackson classic, ‘Got ‘Til It’s Gone’, a song aptly about failing to appreciate what we have until it is taken away from us, a situation, I feel, we have all experienced recently. I am sure, if anything good has emerged from these lockdowns, it is our realisation and appreciation of what we already have – our lives and our families.
- Lujayn Ismail, Year 12
Life in Lockdown
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