You always tell me that you remember your twelfth year as the happiest you can remember.

 

After a brief, and shall we say turbulent, time at your new secondary school, STAGS, something unthinkable happened. We hadn't been skiing that year, but Mum had recently come back from a skiing trip with her supper club friends. Around that point we started hearing stories of an unpleasant virus coming from China after some random dudes ate a bat or something. I'm not saying mummy brought the virus back into the UK, but as random timing would have it, very shortly after that the world went into something called lockdown.

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Before you knew it, we had all completely changed our lives - doing weird things like working out to Joe Wicks and having video call bingo with friends. But it meant we spent loads of time together as a family, which I think was a really great thing for you at that time, because you were not particularly loving life.

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One of my most treasured memories from lockdown was your birthday party - just the four of us. You loved burritos, fajitas and Mexican food, so we had a Mexican birthday party complete with ponchos, sombreros, salsa music and a Mexican scene projected onto the cinema screen. It was crazy but so much fun.

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As weird as lockdown was, I can't help but agree with you - it was probably one of my favourite ever times. Spending that much time together as a family and never really falling out. Exception one: Mummy shouts "pick up your fork fork fork…" Exception two: Dad gets angry at the table, slams his fist down and butter goes flying in the air.