Everyday stories
"We are all in this together" . A daily constant in the Downing Street press conference . 'This' being the truly horrendous global pandemic of worldwide carnage and chaos, true, but 'this' also refers to our own nation. As each country is dealing individually with this crisis, I cannot escape a sinking sensation that our own seems to have lost its way?
'This' in the UK has to reflect the ghastly fact that our overall death toll from hospitals and care homes ( as best can be statistically accounted for, given the acknowledged issues in recording COVID-19 on death certificates) is rapidly heading towards being the worst in Europe. Testing policy is confusing, conflicting and issues with access continue.
Our much acclaimed Nightingale hospitals are still empty, a positive sign of controlling the pandemic, but the economic cost and forecast are of nightmare proportions. No surprise then that now many businesses are beginning to reopen, DIY shops, Burger King, MacDonalds, small businesses, all legally, claiming they have implemented the necessary social distancing rules. Traffic is building up once again on our roads.
As yet we are been given no idea about any formal 'exit strategy' despite this shift in public life and resulting breakdown of mass lockdown. The much heralded return of PM Boris Johnson has brought only again the constant slogan to remain patient, as 'we work together' to defeat the virus.
Togetherness is such a wonderful social and cultural myth, drawing on historic identities to engender a unifying sense of belonging. It can, if it works, shape a shared sense of purpose and consensus linking a divided, diverse community, moulding them as one against an unseen enemy.
However, it is becoming increasingly obvious 'we' no longer feel unified, or certainly not as much as a month ago. Mass media is now full of ideas, theories, proposals on how to end our lockdown as businesses across the land take matters into their own hands and MP s on all sides speak out openly against our confinement, arguing that cost, emotionally, physiologically, economically, collectively and individually, is becoming too heavy to bear. The daily mantra of togetherness is sounding increasingly hollow.
This post brings individual stories from behind our closed doors together. There are themes emerging, a growing awareness of what has been lost to us in these weeks, of a growing resentment with the way this crisis has/is being handled and a growing need to see a way forward despite our universal grief for the death of thousands, millions, across the world.
.........................
Sarah Boughton
Today is day 39 of my home confinement (lockdown sounds too punitive) due to coronavirus. For me this was preceded by ten days stuck at home after falling and hurting my foot.
For the last few days I have been beset by the feeling that 2020 has been stolen from me by the pox. I have everything to be thankful for – I am retired and living comfortably on a pension, I have a house and garden, enough food to eat, a congenial partner and a family who I get on with. I have good health and no underlying conditions, but have no desire to catch Covid-19 given how nasty and exhausting it sounds even in its mild form. And obviously I don’t want to be one of those who ends up in hospital or dead.
But all the things I would normally be doing in pre-virus life are affected if I want to keep myself well until a vaccine is available.
In the months to come I don’t expect to be able to go to pubs, restaurants, music venues and gigs, to rehearse with my band, to sing with my choir,to do a pottery class. I shan’t be visiting my friends in other parts of the country, or holidaying away, for fear of infection and falling ill away from home, we won’t be welcoming visitors here. I won’t be on public transport, or visiting Brighton or London just for a change of scene or to meet a friend. I won’t be visiting my family for fear of spreading illness – them to me or me to them. Maybe we can have some socially distanced meetings out of doors, who knows?
I can’t help but also be aware that in three weeks I shall turn 70, which I suspect may immediately thrust me into an ‘elderly’ category around which some new rules may be fashioned as lockdown is slowly lessened. I may just feel obliged to be as flexible as possible with the rules in order to keep glimpsing my new granddaughter, or walking by the sea, while trying to ensure that I don’t catch anything.
After a lifetime of (mostly) certainty, everything is up in the air and none of us can see a way through it. As an optimist I cling on to the likelihood that by mid 2021 I will be able to do all those things that I used to, and that were snatched away so unexpectedly during March 2020.
..................Grace Austin
I have been living in a gilded cage - locked down with husband, children and a grandchild, with access to the countryside, fresh food and other family links through digital media. Nothing to cry about at all.
Yet in the past couple of weeks the news about the BAME population dying in greater numbers than their representation in the UK population, both as medical and care workers and in the wider world has brought me to tears.
The same tears of frustration that I shed when reading of the government pushing ahead with HS2 tree felling in the early weeks of the lockdown, disregarding social distancing and evicting protesters from trees.
I have been ashamed of the UK government since the Brexit
debacle, with the discrimination against the people who they now rely on as key workers. The lack of joined up thinking that has led to UK farmers chartering their own flights to enable crops to be harvested by Romanian workers and the prioritisation of large infrastructure projects which may never be needed, indicate that we may well return to business as usual after this event rather than re-thinking how we stucture our society, unless we contribute to the debate.
My husband's words of wisdom are "Don't concentrate on the negatives, of which there are so many; try rather to envisage and act on initiatives to make a better future." So we are spending time in hopeful discussion in which nothing is too fanciful.
....................
Richard from West Sussex
We are personally very fortunate to have no direct experience of the virus however the impact has affected our lifestyle and especially many of our friends abroad.
News comes to me from Africa where there is a real fear of being overwhelmed with the virus, knowing medical provision is so limited. In Kenya there has been a lockdown for some time and borders closed several weeks ago. This meant months of planning to bring friends from Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda together, had to be postponed.In Kenya especially the economic implications have been considerable as food prices have risen and the few who have jobs, have lost their jobs.
The UK Government has tried to help with peoples` wages and to protect our NHS but this is virtually impossible for most African governments. I have news from Malawi where the virus is now reported and again the fear of it becoming widespread and in Sierra Leone, which has only recently recovered from the Ebola crisis, they had hoped the lockdown would stop today but have learned it continues.
In Liberia my friend has malaria but his sister- in- law is a nurse and she has the virus. In Pakistan the virus has hit and again economically the poorer people and minority groups are struggling for food.
Churches have been closed all over the world and the majority of Christian groups that I know have wanted to support their governments and set an example to their communities in terms of social distancing. However celebrating Christ`s death and resurrection at Easter was very different.
There have been some good spin-offs. Churches are exploring developing services to place on their websites and also live streaming. Various methods of having virtual meetings have been explored. Clapping for the NHS Thursday night in our Close has been very heart-warming and we are pleased to hear of many deeds of kindness. Everyone wants it to end soon but for those spared the actual ordeal, it brings immense gratitude and the reminder again of the fragility of life.
...................................
Kate , staying with her son for the duration.
To state the obvious really, while the lockdown has caused tremendous hardship for some, for others it has made no financial difference. For my two sons, one finds life worse, as he has had a pay cut. He’s in a shared house with three young people whose parents live abroad. For the other, life has improved a bit. OK, he can’t see his friends, but he saves four hours a day in travelling time and about £266 per month in train fares. And he has his Mum to do the cooking and cleaning!
His favourite activity is to get together with three friends on WhatsApp – they all make themselves a drink and seem to do quiz questions!! But he did say he was glad to have me here for the company. I am very happy to be here; I don’t think I’d have done very well alone.
Every evening I try to recall what I have achieved during the day. I am surprisingly busy. I am aware that friends , some of whom are over 70 so have to stay home, are feeling very isolated and some are particularly missing grandchildren.
One of the strangest aspects is if you go for a walk at 8.30 a.m. you only see other people strolling or jogging – nobody is scurrying off to work. The fabulous weather has helped a lot. What’ll we do when it breaks?
I am spending less as I can’t travel or go out, so am trying to give that money to charity – but there are many demands and it is hard to decide who should benefit. I drink more – have a glass of wine on many days of the week. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be if you’re a recovering alcoholic.
My builders continue, as there can be one or even two working in different areas of the empty house, but it is getting more and more difficult to find materials. I can see it is simplest to stop everything but surely there must be ways of e.g. allowing garden centres to sell their plants. Seems like it’s good to be in the storage business. All my furniture is in storage and I can’t get it out because they’ve closed – but I still have to pay the storage fee …
It’s also odd being in a different town, staying with my son. I have no idea what’s happening here and it’s hard to find out. So I know what’s what in Lewes but I’m too far away to be involved. I feel very worried about cinemas and theatres, also cafes and restaurants. There are probably more cafes than we need but it would be awful to lose cinemas and theatres.
I find it intensely irritating that every time a journalist asks about post-lockdown plans the duty politician will say, ‘We can’t confuse the public by talking now about letting them out in the future.’ Do they think we are really that stupid? We have been failed by the government (surprise surprise). I travelled back from Portugal on 1 March and the only sign of Covid-19 at the airport was a small A4 notice stuck on the wall. Incoming travellers should have been more strictly controlled, even in February. The government should have been organising PPE back then.
As for Boris Johnson missing Cobra meetings, etc. etc. - well, it’s just typical! But at least they are trying to help businesses although there’s not much for microbusinesses. And the Nightingale hospitals were organised in good time.
I feel a bit bleak when wondering about the future, not so much personally but about how people who’ve lost jobs will cope and how society will operate if we’re basically scared of being infected by everybody else.
....................
Thank you to everyone who wrote, Writing is like a virtual reality meeting, it helps keep us in touch and helps us feel we are not alone. It brings us together. For me every day is a mixture of hope and despair, I moan my missing weeks, the lost time with my loved ones and my young granddaughters, I feel increasingly pessimistic about the how, why and wherefores of going forward but I also cling to optimism, This time will pass and we will come together again.
"We are all in this together" . A daily constant in the Downing Street press conference . 'This' being the truly horrendous global pandemic of worldwide carnage and chaos, true, but 'this' also refers to our own nation. As each country is dealing individually with this crisis, I cannot escape a sinking sensation that our own seems to have lost its way?
'This' in the UK has to reflect the ghastly fact that our overall death toll from hospitals and care homes ( as best can be statistically accounted for, given the acknowledged issues in recording COVID-19 on death certificates) is rapidly heading towards being the worst in Europe. Testing policy is confusing, conflicting and issues with access continue.
Our much acclaimed Nightingale hospitals are still empty, a positive sign of controlling the pandemic, but the economic cost and forecast are of nightmare proportions. No surprise then that now many businesses are beginning to reopen, DIY shops, Burger King, MacDonalds, small businesses, all legally, claiming they have implemented the necessary social distancing rules. Traffic is building up once again on our roads.
As yet we are been given no idea about any formal 'exit strategy' despite this shift in public life and resulting breakdown of mass lockdown. The much heralded return of PM Boris Johnson has brought only again the constant slogan to remain patient, as 'we work together' to defeat the virus.
Togetherness is such a wonderful social and cultural myth, drawing on historic identities to engender a unifying sense of belonging. It can, if it works, shape a shared sense of purpose and consensus linking a divided, diverse community, moulding them as one against an unseen enemy.
However, it is becoming increasingly obvious 'we' no longer feel unified, or certainly not as much as a month ago. Mass media is now full of ideas, theories, proposals on how to end our lockdown as businesses across the land take matters into their own hands and MP s on all sides speak out openly against our confinement, arguing that cost, emotionally, physiologically, economically, collectively and individually, is becoming too heavy to bear. The daily mantra of togetherness is sounding increasingly hollow.
This post brings individual stories from behind our closed doors together. There are themes emerging, a growing awareness of what has been lost to us in these weeks, of a growing resentment with the way this crisis has/is being handled and a growing need to see a way forward despite our universal grief for the death of thousands, millions, across the world.
.........................
Sarah Boughton
Today is day 39 of my home confinement (lockdown sounds too punitive) due to coronavirus. For me this was preceded by ten days stuck at home after falling and hurting my foot.
For the last few days I have been beset by the feeling that 2020 has been stolen from me by the pox. I have everything to be thankful for – I am retired and living comfortably on a pension, I have a house and garden, enough food to eat, a congenial partner and a family who I get on with. I have good health and no underlying conditions, but have no desire to catch Covid-19 given how nasty and exhausting it sounds even in its mild form. And obviously I don’t want to be one of those who ends up in hospital or dead.
But all the things I would normally be doing in pre-virus life are affected if I want to keep myself well until a vaccine is available.
In the months to come I don’t expect to be able to go to pubs, restaurants, music venues and gigs, to rehearse with my band, to sing with my choir,to do a pottery class. I shan’t be visiting my friends in other parts of the country, or holidaying away, for fear of infection and falling ill away from home, we won’t be welcoming visitors here. I won’t be on public transport, or visiting Brighton or London just for a change of scene or to meet a friend. I won’t be visiting my family for fear of spreading illness – them to me or me to them. Maybe we can have some socially distanced meetings out of doors, who knows?
I can’t help but also be aware that in three weeks I shall turn 70, which I suspect may immediately thrust me into an ‘elderly’ category around which some new rules may be fashioned as lockdown is slowly lessened. I may just feel obliged to be as flexible as possible with the rules in order to keep glimpsing my new granddaughter, or walking by the sea, while trying to ensure that I don’t catch anything.
After a lifetime of (mostly) certainty, everything is up in the air and none of us can see a way through it. As an optimist I cling on to the likelihood that by mid 2021 I will be able to do all those things that I used to, and that were snatched away so unexpectedly during March 2020.
..................Grace Austin
I have been living in a gilded cage - locked down with husband, children and a grandchild, with access to the countryside, fresh food and other family links through digital media. Nothing to cry about at all.
Yet in the past couple of weeks the news about the BAME population dying in greater numbers than their representation in the UK population, both as medical and care workers and in the wider world has brought me to tears.
The same tears of frustration that I shed when reading of the government pushing ahead with HS2 tree felling in the early weeks of the lockdown, disregarding social distancing and evicting protesters from trees.
I have been ashamed of the UK government since the Brexit
debacle, with the discrimination against the people who they now rely on as key workers. The lack of joined up thinking that has led to UK farmers chartering their own flights to enable crops to be harvested by Romanian workers and the prioritisation of large infrastructure projects which may never be needed, indicate that we may well return to business as usual after this event rather than re-thinking how we stucture our society, unless we contribute to the debate.
My husband's words of wisdom are "Don't concentrate on the negatives, of which there are so many; try rather to envisage and act on initiatives to make a better future." So we are spending time in hopeful discussion in which nothing is too fanciful.
....................
Richard from West Sussex
We are personally very fortunate to have no direct experience of the virus however the impact has affected our lifestyle and especially many of our friends abroad.
News comes to me from Africa where there is a real fear of being overwhelmed with the virus, knowing medical provision is so limited. In Kenya there has been a lockdown for some time and borders closed several weeks ago. This meant months of planning to bring friends from Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda together, had to be postponed.In Kenya especially the economic implications have been considerable as food prices have risen and the few who have jobs, have lost their jobs.
The UK Government has tried to help with peoples` wages and to protect our NHS but this is virtually impossible for most African governments. I have news from Malawi where the virus is now reported and again the fear of it becoming widespread and in Sierra Leone, which has only recently recovered from the Ebola crisis, they had hoped the lockdown would stop today but have learned it continues.
In Liberia my friend has malaria but his sister- in- law is a nurse and she has the virus. In Pakistan the virus has hit and again economically the poorer people and minority groups are struggling for food.
Churches have been closed all over the world and the majority of Christian groups that I know have wanted to support their governments and set an example to their communities in terms of social distancing. However celebrating Christ`s death and resurrection at Easter was very different.
There have been some good spin-offs. Churches are exploring developing services to place on their websites and also live streaming. Various methods of having virtual meetings have been explored. Clapping for the NHS Thursday night in our Close has been very heart-warming and we are pleased to hear of many deeds of kindness. Everyone wants it to end soon but for those spared the actual ordeal, it brings immense gratitude and the reminder again of the fragility of life.
...................................
Kate , staying with her son for the duration.
To state the obvious really, while the lockdown has caused tremendous hardship for some, for others it has made no financial difference. For my two sons, one finds life worse, as he has had a pay cut. He’s in a shared house with three young people whose parents live abroad. For the other, life has improved a bit. OK, he can’t see his friends, but he saves four hours a day in travelling time and about £266 per month in train fares. And he has his Mum to do the cooking and cleaning!
His favourite activity is to get together with three friends on WhatsApp – they all make themselves a drink and seem to do quiz questions!! But he did say he was glad to have me here for the company. I am very happy to be here; I don’t think I’d have done very well alone.
Every evening I try to recall what I have achieved during the day. I am surprisingly busy. I am aware that friends , some of whom are over 70 so have to stay home, are feeling very isolated and some are particularly missing grandchildren.
One of the strangest aspects is if you go for a walk at 8.30 a.m. you only see other people strolling or jogging – nobody is scurrying off to work. The fabulous weather has helped a lot. What’ll we do when it breaks?
I am spending less as I can’t travel or go out, so am trying to give that money to charity – but there are many demands and it is hard to decide who should benefit. I drink more – have a glass of wine on many days of the week. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be if you’re a recovering alcoholic.
My builders continue, as there can be one or even two working in different areas of the empty house, but it is getting more and more difficult to find materials. I can see it is simplest to stop everything but surely there must be ways of e.g. allowing garden centres to sell their plants. Seems like it’s good to be in the storage business. All my furniture is in storage and I can’t get it out because they’ve closed – but I still have to pay the storage fee …
It’s also odd being in a different town, staying with my son. I have no idea what’s happening here and it’s hard to find out. So I know what’s what in Lewes but I’m too far away to be involved. I feel very worried about cinemas and theatres, also cafes and restaurants. There are probably more cafes than we need but it would be awful to lose cinemas and theatres.
I find it intensely irritating that every time a journalist asks about post-lockdown plans the duty politician will say, ‘We can’t confuse the public by talking now about letting them out in the future.’ Do they think we are really that stupid? We have been failed by the government (surprise surprise). I travelled back from Portugal on 1 March and the only sign of Covid-19 at the airport was a small A4 notice stuck on the wall. Incoming travellers should have been more strictly controlled, even in February. The government should have been organising PPE back then.
As for Boris Johnson missing Cobra meetings, etc. etc. - well, it’s just typical! But at least they are trying to help businesses although there’s not much for microbusinesses. And the Nightingale hospitals were organised in good time.
I feel a bit bleak when wondering about the future, not so much personally but about how people who’ve lost jobs will cope and how society will operate if we’re basically scared of being infected by everybody else.
....................
Thank you to everyone who wrote, Writing is like a virtual reality meeting, it helps keep us in touch and helps us feel we are not alone. It brings us together. For me every day is a mixture of hope and despair, I moan my missing weeks, the lost time with my loved ones and my young granddaughters, I feel increasingly pessimistic about the how, why and wherefores of going forward but I also cling to optimism, This time will pass and we will come together again.
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