Owen takes some time to reflect on his current situation.
Having returned home from holiday on an emergency flight a couple of weeks ago and now with the whole family “confined to barracks” for the foreseeable, it’s fair to say that as we’ve had to make some significant adjustments in this unusual situation. I find a conversation via WhatsApp video with my 96 year-old grandmother is always a good way of putting things into perspective, however. She lived and worked as a nurse during the blitz in London, where she first met my grandfather – a doctor – over a patient they were attending. Her take on the current state of affairs is that not a lot has changed for her personally. She talks of how she, “is used to spending time in her own company” and that, “the only real change is that I can’t go to church”. If anything she tells me that, “she is almost having more contact with people”. With a network of friends in her neighbourhood in Boston, Lincolnshire, she assures me that she is well cared for and as she already does her shopping online, the fridge is very well stocked.
This got me thinking; as the first real national emergency that my generation and the generation above me has lived through, are we perhaps all being a little dramatic? I fear for wellbeing of my loved ones but we’re not literally being bombed. I’ve been woken up at all hours of the morning by our 1 and 3 year-olds but I’m not being woken up by an air raid siren. We’re running low on pasta and rice but we’re not starving. We’re stuck in but we have any number of digital means to communicate (face-to-face) with those we hold dear, all over the world. I like to think that I’m an optimist and in my opinion we can take so many positives away from this crisis: More than half a million people volunteering to help the NHS, businesses adapting their focus to produce ventilators and PPE for front line workers, neighbours generally being more neighbourly, individuals and businesses adapting to new ways of working overnight, people spending time with and appreciating their immediate family. The list could go on. While I understand that I’m in an extremely lucky position where I can work from home and get daily fresh air, I genuinely believe that we can all find our own positives and that we will be galvanised as a nation when we come out the other side of Covid-19.
Owen’s grandmother with his baby