We’ve done really well at being bad this week.
We’ve had more than 10,000 deaths. Stories are starting to come out about how bad the situation is in some care homes. We’re not testing. Many frontline workers don’t have adequate PPE (or any PPE at all). Too many people are still not socially distancing.
Manchester has been in the news for the number of parties the police have had to break up. This BBC article has a map filled with dots showing where each of the 660 parties were. 494 were house parties which is bad enough but 166 were street parties.
And it’s not just parties. A friend told how she got caught up in mini riot as she drove home from a nursing shift. Items were thrown at her car and it was all quite scary. Turns out, that following the death of a man on a motorcycle, people thought it okay to come out en masse and hold a vigil. When the police tried to break it up they rioted.
My mind is really struggling to comprehend this. It’s always going to be a sad time when someone close to you dies and even more so when they are young and the death is unexpected. I’ve noticed this week that the radio station I’ve been listening to has had quite a few people calling in who have only just lost someone close to them. In some cases it’s been a parent who had died just a couple of hours earlier. This would never usually happen, but of course after several weeks of isolation when maybe the only voices you’ve been hearing are those on the radio, then that is where you turn in your hour of need.
I feel so sad for people in this situation. Normally when someone dies you have all your family and friends around you. You have people to hug and have that physical contact with. You can share endless cups of tea. You’re constantly busy arranging things for the funeral and welcoming visitors. All that has gone. Zoom might be great for some things but it can’t replicate the emotional support of a hug.
So many people are finding themselves in this situation up and down the country and dealing with it the best they can, even if that means ringing a radio station. Which made me even madder to hear about the vigil and ‘riot’ in Gorton. Why did they think it was okay from them to do that? They’ve put themselves, the police officers and everyone they come into contact with at risk. As well as making it very scary for any essential workers just trying to get home after a stressful shift. And were that many people really all close friends and family?
The other driver involved in the accident was arrested for drink driving. So I doubt he was out in his BMW because he was on his way to or from his job as an essential worker or because he’d been picking up groceries for his grandparents. I don’t know why the motorcyclist was out. If he was on his way home from a shift at a hospital or care home or supermarket then that makes it even sadder. If he was out because he fancied taking his bike out for a spin then I’ll struggle to find sympathy when his going out has endangered countless others and taken up hospital resources needlessly.
Does that make me a horrible person?
Stay home unless your journey is essential. It really shouldn’t be that difficult.
Actually, I can kind of understand why people without gardens or even balconies might be going out as staying indoors the whole time, especially if you’re sharing your living space, really can’t be good for your mental or physical health. But are all those people in parks really there because they live in over-crowded accommodation without any outdoor space? Maybe we need a system where the people without gardens get a priority pass for the parks a bit like NHS workers are getting priority access to a lot of shops.
Talking of shops, I went to the supermarket again this week, only my second time since lockdown. It’s suprising how little you actually need to buy when you’re not out and about getting tempted all the time.
My local Tesco has got stricter with it’s social distancing. Now as well as queuing outside you also have to follow a strictly enforced one-way route around the store. There’s just one queue for the checkouts and you have wait in line at the far end of the store until you are called forward and directed to an available checkout. It’s a good system and seemed to be working well. People on the whole were keeping their distance from each other and allowing plenty of space when passing.
I haven’t done much work this week as it’s officially Easter holidays and I should be in Bournemouth. The first part of the week I was going to be at my union’s annual conference and then from Thursday afternoon onwards I was going to spend a week on holiday in my van exploring the south coast. Instead I’ve been at home and have been getting my garden sorted out.
I decided to browse a few websites to look for garden furniture and for the first time ever found myself having to queue to get onto a website. I’d google ‘garden furniture’, click on a link and instead of getting onto the site I’d get a message saying ‘you are in a queue – the expected wait is 10 mins‘ (or in some cases an hour!). Everybody must have had the same idea as me. Needless to say I still haven’t got any new garden furniture.
As well as tidying up my garden, I’ve also been doing a free course on Coursera called ‘The Science of Well-Being’. It’s a course that was originally designed for students at Yale but has now been made available to the public. Basically it’s the psychology of happiness and although I kind of know a lot of it from other reading I’ve done, I’m still finding it interesting to learn about the different studies that have been done. Did you know that the tipping point for the amount of money you need to earn to be happiest is $75,000? When you don’t earn much you have a lot of worries about providing for your basic needs which can prevent you being completely happy, but there comes a point when having extra money doesn’t actually make any difference to how happy you are. I’ve always assumed this – is someone who earns £250k really going to be happier than someone who earns £230k? – but I never knew at what amount it stopped making a difference. Well now I do. $75k is equivalent to about £60k so although I’m quite content at the moment a hefty payrise would make me truly happy.
I suppose the figure should really be adjusted depending on how expensive the place you live is (60k will get me a lot more in Manchester than it would in London or New York) and what your essential outgoings are (could you be happy on less, for example, if you didn’t have to pay rent or a mortgage?) Anyway, the course is interesting and if you’ve got time on your hands you should check it out.
In other news, Boris Johnson left hospital today. He’s been in intensive care with Covid-19. He gave a speech thanking the staff who’d looked after him and name-checked Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal who’d stayed by his ICU bedside for 48 hours caring for him when he was at his worst.
Yes Boris, maybe you’ll see now why immigrants aren’t so bad after all. If you’d had more success with your party’s hostile environment polices you wouldn’t have had Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal to look after you. I guess we’ll see over the coming months and the next few years whether your thanks are empty words or not. Hopefully they won’t be and you’ll have learnt from your experience to hold both our NHS and immigrants in higher regard than you’ve been wont to.
The general public have been showing their appreciation for the NHS for the past few Thursdays now, with everyone coming out onto their doorsteps at 8pm and clapping for a minute or two. It’s a really nice gesture and helps keep community spirit going at a time when you can’t really have much engagement with your neighbours. Let’s hope this support for the NHS translates into pressure for better funding and payrises when this is over
And that’s about it for this week. What observations have you made this week? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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