Colm O'Regan: Children have done more than their fair share 

They, including our own two, are probably still the most enthusiastic hand-washers. The most trenchant GIVE THEM SPACE stewards on the footpath. And I may have not realised fully how much this might weigh gradually on them. 

It was the school video that reminded me. The eldest’s school, in lieu of a winter concert, made a video where all the classes did a variety of different things, songs, slideshows, pomes, dances. Some absolute hero or heroes of teachers and others then put all the hundreds of bits of stuff together into a nice video, didn’t leave anyone out, and put that up on the school website for families to see. We watched it at home with popcorn and the Terminator-like visual scanning that every parent does where you sift through incoming footage for appearances and mentions of your own child.

But actually we ended up watching all of it, including the 99% of it that didn’t involve our girl. Because at this stage, we are ready to hoover up all good, wholesome stuff. While waiting for sunshine and vaccines, watching small children playing the ‘Walking in the Air’ song from The Snowman is about the best thing we can do for our immune systems.