We were prepared for life to be different for the four of us once we arrived back in the UK after our eight months of traveling the world. Since we got back, it’s been said and thought many times – how incredible our timing was.

In idle moments away, we frequently discussed what our priorities would be once we landed. We had decided to arrive back in early March as our hazy memory of that time of year was that things were warming up, it being spring (how foolish!!) and it was the start of birthday season in the family. Joanna’s kicks that off each year on the 26th February and we spent that in New York. Little did we know just how many times we would be singing happy birthday to ourselves as we repeatedly washed our hands…

We landed in London Heathrow the day before my mum’s birthday so could spend it together at home in Islington.

A week later it is Grandma Egerton’s birthday and the day after cousin Cassie’s.

Two lazy long lunches with birthday candles for the grandmas, one fun sweaty afternoon with twenty kids, cake and a bouncy castle for Cassie. MoJo had been looking forward to the ‘things that fly…’ party ever since they had been sent the invitation and had been planning their outfits for weeks! It was a great day, highlights being meeting the newest member of the family and all the girls playing pass the parcel.

Birthdays aside, first on our serious setting up our new life to-do-list was getting the girls into school, which would require us to find a place to live. Next would be buying bikes or scooters for the girls to get to school (the plan was to live close enough to do that). Finding a job for Tom would come next, probably in a hotel given his experience, then probably buying a car and lastly a job for me, once we had worked out childcare options.

A while ago we had pinpointed the west London borough of Ealing as the location that would best suit us to live. I visited some schools and houses last April. We took advice from a couple of friends we knew in the area and slowly got excited about how life would be for us there, with plenty of green space, easy access in and out of central London and good options for primary schools.

Days after returning we had made calls to estate agents, booked ourselves onto school tours and Tom had accepted a two-day work trip to the Netherlands. After a week, we had spent a day in Ealing and found a fully-furnished three-bedroomed house to rent, on a cul-de-sac a short walk across a park to our favourite school. School applications were in, deposit paid, move in date scheduled for the beginning of April. The question really was whether the girls would start school before or after the Easter holidays.

Then of course, everything changed. Our fears for the future, which had been growing ever since the first outbreak of Coronavirus in January, became big enough for us to change our minds. After seeing it happen first in Dubai, then across Europe and the US it finally been announced that schools in England will close indefinitely on Friday.

Today we made the very difficult decision to make a u-turn on our plans for now. As we are all being forced to do, we have put our new life ‘on hold’. Meeting up with all our dear friends and wider family in the UK is going to have to wait.

During Lockdown 1 (as it was to be called) we are very fortunate to be made to feel welcome in two homes in London: Tom’s childhood home in North Harrow and my mums in Islington (every other week I took one girl there for a long weekend). To pay rent on a house for us when the girls won’t be going to school and Tom and I are extremely unlikely to find paid employment would be foolish in the extreme.

A major advantage with the necessary homeschooling was having four adults in the house keen to spend time with MoJo and resources collected over many years. Grandparents who possess an interesting range of skills and knowledge areas – a PhD in Chemistry and forty years of primary school teaching no less. Rough timetables were drawn up, incorporating household chores as well as a variety of lessons and plenty of time for board games.

With four of us around, Tom can find time to do manual tasks in the garden and loft and I can keep writing. We rotate going to the shops and cooking meals, and make sure we still manage to go on runs and walks round the block to clear our heads.

Three generations can attempt to live together peacefully and happily, making the most of the time we are forced to spend together. Lots of laughs have been shared so far! Yes of course as well there will be a lot of TV watched, things will get broken (so far a bed, ornament and a broom…watch this space!) there will be tears, cross words and regret. I live under no illusions. The wider world is also understandably so full of worry and anxiety. But instead of getting caught up in every news story, we must switch off now and again and embrace a surprising opportunity: we have been given time. A commodity which as a parent I have felt increasingly precious and rare, we now have time – time to spend together, time to read stories, time to reflect, time to talk, time to learn about one another. Let’s make the most of it.

It is mad to consider how impossible our world tour would have been if it had been planned to finish even a few weeks later than it did. I am aware, and indeed am quite glad that I still have five countries from our Egerton World Tour to write about here on the blog. Now is of course a great time to do this, so expect posts on those to go live over the coming weeks. It feels even more important now to remember and recount our many adventures. When I am up-to-date I will continue to post about how life is panning out for us back in the UK – how life with MoJo is going in these extraordinary times.