{"id":11636,"date":"2020-07-26T22:07:26","date_gmt":"2020-07-26T21:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11636"},"modified":"2020-07-30T15:10:20","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T14:10:20","slug":"a-day-of-lockdown-by-elliot-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11636","title":{"rendered":"<em>A Day of Lockdown<\/em> by Elliot Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Year 8 Rivington and Blackrod<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I stretch my arms wide into the air and squint my eyes at the bright light shining into my bedroom through the curtains. \u2018What a beautiful day\u2019 I think to myself as I crawl out of bed. I stand up and walk over to my drawer pulling out shorts and a t-shirt and throwing them on, opening the door and&#8230; Nothing. Sand, a beach, trees and a pile of rocks. A bare, lonely and dull place with no contact with anyone. No hope of going anywhere or doing anything I slump down against the tree. After a few minutes of boredom, I look up the tree to find a coconut hanging in it. I bang my fist hard into the tree, and sure enough, the coconut falls right in front of me. I reach out and grab it before it hits the floor and see, to my disgust, a bowl of the same cereal I have had for the past 15 weeks. Nevertheless, I am still hungry, so I eat without fuss. I proceed to check out the island only to find a computer sitting on a desk under a large rock. Just behind the desk is a rather small wooden chair. I decide I could do with a seat so sit down and upon sitting on the chair, as if like magic, there is a burst torrential rain. Scared and confused, I quickly retreat from the chair only for the sun to reappear again. I decided to stay away from the computer in case of anything else peculiar. After about an hour of lying on the warm sand, I hear a quiet sound that sounds like \u2018BU BA DU\u2019 coming from near the computer. It sounded like someone was popping a musical balloon. As I got closer to the computer there becomes more and more until after a whole minute, it finally stops. I cautiously make my way around the desk and click on my emails. 36 NEW EMAILS!!!! I open them all up one by one to see that each subject had sent work and a time to be handed in. I know what must be done, I have to sit down. It was that time of day already. I opened the email for English, my first lesson of the week, and started on in. Around less than half an hour into the work and I already had fifty questions that I really need to answer. Out of the blue, a parrot, around 1ft tall swoops down from the sky and lands on a small rock next to me. \u201cAnswer your questions,\u201d said the parrot in a stereotypical parrot voice. So, I ask him all my questions and an hour later, we are onto the next subject. \u201cMaths,\u201d I shout and within a second, comes Mr Hegarty from behind the tree. \u201cHi Elliot, Mr Hegarty here,\u201d he says as he takes a perch on the rock next to me. \u201cWhat are we doing in maths today?\u201d he asks. So, I say \u201cwe are doing the pattern of prime numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cpattern of prime numbers is easy all you have to do is look at the&#8230;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It didn\u2019t make any sense to me and I only got 23% so I don\u2019t think you will want to know either. A long, six-hour day sat on the wooden chair has left the sand wet, so I decide to stay sat on the cool, dry sand under the rock until things dry out. The sky starts to darken and the air cools and I decide to put on my pyjamas and go to sleep. What a day, what a long, hard, confusing day&#8230; I wake up in the morning wide awake and look at the time on my wall 8 o clock for another monotonous day. What a dream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Year 8 Rivington and Blackrod I stretch my arms wide into the air and squint my eyes at the bright light shining into my bedroom through the curtains. \u2018What a beautiful day\u2019 I think to myself as I crawl out of bed. 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