I THINK I am well on the way to looking like “Cousin Itt” from the Addams Family. He (or she) was the small person covered from head to toe in long flowing hair.

I have resisted the temptation to grow a beard for two reasons. First and foremost, my wife said she would divorce me and secondly, I know I would end up looking like I have a tortoiseshell cat wrapped around my chin. That said I don’t shave every day.

After all who’s going to see me hidden behind a mask or simply sitting working from home?

I’ve had to create a home office. I do silly things, like saying “I’m off to work now see you later” when all I’m doing is walking up the stairs into a spare bedroom.

I’m very lucky, I have two screens, some IT aids from my actual work office and good, stable, high-speed broadband. Many others are not so lucky – they may have a flaky low speed broadband or high competition for resources.

In a house where you may have two parents working from home, a few children trying to do home schoolwork, your wifi can easily fall over and then, it all goes to pot.

One former Labour education minister, now resident in the House of Lords, loudly proclaimed online that he had written to Ofsted to complain that not all schools were delivering live lessons online and that this would disadvantage children.

Lord Andrew Adonis seemed miffed – perhaps it was the stress of home schooling his own children? But he’s wrong.

Firstly, there is no requirement for schools to deliver daily or even weekly online live lessons. Even if some schools are trying, what happens if the live lessons for different children clash? What if you don’t have a laptop, just a mobile phone, 4G and a limited amount of mobile data?

Schools have and continue to deliver a huge amount of online support in the form of packages of lessons, worksheets, calls to homes, sometimes live lessons and often checking and marking work.

This is being done in addition to coping with their own family circumstances and children of their own who may be attending not their school but another one. We must also not forget that schools did not close.

Schools remained open for the children of key workers and staff were often placed on rota working across the Easter holiday and even on bank holidays and weekends in some places.

Another thing often forgotten is that schools and teachers went from a normal planned timetable to delivering online education in a matter of two to three days – not weeks or months, with no warning and precious little preparation.

In my own work we swiftly moved from face to face teaching and contact to online working in a matter of a few days and that was stressful enough.

Of course, these stresses and strains are nothing compared to the work that others are currently doing on the front line of our healthcare system.

We also take for granted some aspects of life that are often delivered seamlessly to us – our daily electricity, gas and water supplies. The post and parcel deliveries we see daily.

But the supply chains behind our supermarkets, getting the food from the factories and farms to our shelves often happens invisibly to us – we see the trucks on the road, but many things happen at night or early morning when we are not aware of their presence or importance. We just assume things will be there for us.

The concept of seasonal foods will be foreign to many young people. As a child I can remember that there was great excitement when certain foods came into season and we could freely buy them – strawberries for example.

As a society we have become lazy and arrogant in that we assume we can have what we want when we want it – from a haircut to an exotic fruit.

Perhaps this crisis will provide us with a new appreciation of our world, of each other and of the intense work that goes on behind the scenes to make our lives so comfortable.

One thing I have noticed when on my daily walk is that people are noticing other people and there seems to be more kindness and awareness of others.

It may be because there’s an element of fear, we don’t want to get to close to other people.

But generally, we are, for once, taking note of our surroundings rather than simply looking at our phones.

I think social distancing is an unfortunate label for what we must do during this crisis. I’d prefer to call it physical distancing, after all, being social is still possible at a distance.