Jonny McCambridge: If it’s this hard for me, what’s it like for others?

But, instead of gathering around a table with my colleagues, I am in my kitchen and their faces are staring at me from a computer screen.

Halfway through my son enters the room and tries to sit on my knee. I indulge him for a bit, gently stroking his golden hair, before I have to ease him back into the hallway.

There are subjects being discussed at this news conference that no six-year-old should have to hear. This is the new normal.

The day passes slowly. Like countless other people I am now working from home and trying to balance it with parental responsibilities. My wife is employed in a job which means she has to leave the house sometimes. This is one of those days.

In a previous era of order the day was clearly bookended. I was with my son in the morning, then he went to school while I went to the office, then I picked him up for some more family time in the evening. Now it has all been meshed together into some sort of untidy pulp.

There is no longer a defined start or an end to the working day, the computer is always there on the kitchen table, the screen blinking provocatively at me. I am always with my son.

It is a little later and I am trying to do some schoolwork with my boy. It is a task I am both cerebrally and temperamentally unsuited for. We complete a few of the worksheets that the school has sent home before I abandon it, unsure if any meaningful progress has been made.

So far today we have played in the garden, gone for a little walk, done some reading and shared lunch, all while I’m trying to further the completion of the next day’s newspaper.

I have a low feeling, one that is borne of a suspicion that this new arrangement means I’m not doing anything well enough, unable to give my full attention to either my job or my rediscovered role as a stay at home father.

There is also a recognition that the world, for my son, is not as it should be. He was initially slow to embrace education, but recently had been thriving in P3, happy, with a circle of friends. He has beloved cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. He has been cruelly ripped away from direct contact with all of them. What was once routine is now forbidden.

We have only one child, there is no brother or sister for him to play with. There is no park or play facility where he can visit.

At a time when his personality and curiosity is blossoming at pace, he is unable to receive the abundance of contact and experience which would nourish his development.

Throughout it all he has been wonderful, accepting with a maturity beyond his years that all is not as it was and that sacrifices have to be made. However desperate he is to play with his friends and cousins, he does not complain.

But he’s also a six-year-old boy with a voracious appetite for fun, learning and adventure. It is natural that he will come to me often wanting to play or just be with him. Sometimes I take him outside, watching him laugh with abandon as he races on his scooter, sometimes he just sits beside me as I type on the computer, drawing pictures or inventing stories.

Work has to be done. I try to find a balance between my two roles but it is inevitable that one thing bleeds into the other. Now, when my son asks me to play with him he always precedes its with ‘Just if you have time daddy...’ Every time I hear that I feel a little bit more diminished as a father.

It is late in the afternoon now and I’m falling behind where I need to be with the daily tasks. The production of a newspaper depends on steady flow, of enough things being done at certain times to keep the whole rusty old vehicle trundling along.

But I’m not moving fast enough and I’m left with no option but to lead the wee man into the front room. I put a film on the TV and leave him some snacks. I ruffle his hair and tell him I’ll be in the next room, and that I’ll check on him every few minutes.

I continue working in the kitchen. After a while I notice that there is no more sound coming from the television. I go to check.

My son is sitting on the floor playing a game. It’s a board game we bought him with counters and dice. He is playing it by himself, pretending there are two people. He takes one turn with the dice and then moves around to the other side of the board and takes the other. He is having a conversation with himself as he does this.

He has his back to me as I watch, which is welcome, because at that moment something breaks inside me. I walk back to the kitchen and the tears finally begin to pour out of me, like a yolk bursting open.

Perhaps I’m crying for my son, perhaps it is for everyone who is suffering, perhaps it is just for me.

I’m aware there is an inherent selfishness in my words. What is happening to society is an ordeal for all, and less for me than most. My family are with me, I know nobody who has become sick. My wife and I are still in employment. Perhaps the point is that if it is this tough for me, who has been affected least, how much worse must it be for those who have been directly impacted, for the families of those who are ill or for the healthcare workers trying to fight this invisible contagion? And how much worse is still to come?

I wash my face at the kitchen table, chastising myself for my weakness and selfishness. The tears are wasted because there is nothing else to do but get on with things.

I go back into the other room.

My son looks up at me hopefully.

‘Just if you have time daddy, would you be able to play with me?’

I sit on the floor beside him and pick up the dice, putting my other arm around him.

‘Of course I will buddy. Of course I will.’