The Sunday Game presenter Joanne Cantwell misses her job and the people she gets "to chat with, work alongside and meet."
"Contradictions and highs and lows – that probably sums up my experience under these restrictions. Firstly, I miss work, miss the job I'm lucky enough to do and miss the people I get to chat with, work alongside and meet.
"However, the same job I love also keeps me away from the two most important people in my life when they’re home, which is at weekends and evenings, so I’m embracing every single second I get with my two daughters now.
"We try to do a couple of hours of obair scoile every day – Monday to Friday. There’s no major rush in the morning, but the aim is to get started at about 10.30 am. This may be the aim, but is rarely the reality. It’s usually more like 11/11.30 am.
"The teachers from the school are very good at keeping in touch online and send various suggested pieces of work to be done each week. As nerdy as it sounds, I like to do up a daily schedule of schoolwork for each of the girls, which takes them up to am-lón (lunch-time.) This is mostly about structure. If they can’t really leave the house, I’m pretty sure they would go absolutely insane without some sort of structure to their days. Not that they always agree with this theory.
"A couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of trying to make things a little more fun when Maths was beginning to annoy them. They’re in second class and senior infants, so they’re only doing addition and subtraction at the moment. So, I made a map of the downstairs of the house, hid sums for each of them in various locations (marked on the map by an "x").
"The correct answer to each sum corresponded to a letter of the alphabet, which spelled out the location of a couple of hidden sweets. It seemed like an excellent idea at the time, but, of course, now that’s all they want, and it takes a lot of time to construct.
"The afternoon is spent out the back garden practising various football and hurling skills, playing on swings and a bit of baking. My sister gave us a Kevin Dundon recipe for brown bread, which is exceptional and exceptionally easy to make. The eight-year-old and six-year-old make it by themselves and then eat it for lunch. We’ve also tried a chocolate chip cookie recipe, which Neven Maguire tweeted a couple of weeks ago, and that is really good too!
"When the girls are in school, I try to get a bit of running or training done in the mornings, but now that things are turned on their heads, I go out for a run once they’re in bed. That means there’s very little time for television or Netflix, although I have squeezed in the archive Championship matches that have been shown recently.
"I’ve also managed to catch the first couple of episodes of Normal People, which has great potential, and I also made sure to see the start of the new series Run on Sky because Domhnall Gleeson is in it, and he’s always brilliant.
"When I finally collapse into bed, it’s usually without having had any sitting-down time and it nearly feels like I’m more exhausted than I’ve ever been. And they’re just the days that don’t also include prep for Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio One and the upcoming series of The Sunday Game on RTÉ Two.
