Somewhere over the Rainbow? – Part 1

First conversation today was with a friend, now 74 years of age,  living alone and whose only contact since the house arrest policy was started has been a couple of phone calls a day with me and another lifelong friend who both, fortunately, share the same hobby, which is walking and bird watching – activities banned for these two who are urban dwellers. Unless you want to risk your neck walking around semi-deserted streets with cyclists who seem to have some built-in aversion to any sort of conformity and ne’er-do-wells. Ne’er-do-wells, who are, according to him, other local residents and irate letters published in the regional press, are still being allowed to congregate in groups, ignoring social distancing guidelines as they sit doing what they did for months, years even. Precisely nothing – at your expense  – while apparently being ignored by the police, who are, as they constantly tell us, ‘busy’ protecting and serving us as usual.

In normal times, he would have breakfast at one of the local café-come-garden centres, where, as a regular, he has a good rapport with the staff and casual acquaintances, who are, in the main, retired people enjoying, in many cases,  their only social contact of the day.  In fact, the cafe owners will tell you that these senior customers make up a goodly percentage of their customer base. Some will tell you that without these people there would be virtually no garden centres, as for most of the year, outside of the growing and planting seasons, there is little customer interest in plants and gardening incidentals. For example, who these days buys a new lawnmower or garden furniture in November?

So is it really a  good idea then to lock up the older generation, the very people who keep the service industries viable, tourism, holidays, theatre, cinema, retail shops, garden centres, the National Trust, together with many voluntary occupations? The list goes on. Not to worry though, the unproductive over-manned public and quango sector will continue to be well looked after while the now unemployed self-employed and the locked-down older residents will be quite happy to sit at home broke bored or more annoyed by the minute while looking at  T.V personalities telling them how and what to think. Can’t you just see that going well? Because I find it difficult, but there you are.

Obviously, the Government has not heard of the Human Rights Act, Equality legislation, Magna Carta, or the Bill of Rights it seems. I trust that our Home Secretary is getting some good legal advice because if this keeps going on, they are going to need it. As will the police service who seem to have forgotten not only how to police but also behave.

However, back to my friend. Pre – CV his social time of the day was a regular supermarket visit, and a coffee, or sometimes lunch in the café. Good value he says, even if the other diners are usually older people. No chance of that now, of course. He did manage to get a home delivery from one of the online sources but that took nearly fourteen days to arrive and was full of ‘alternatives’ due to the huge demand. It would seem that many of our citizens did not only swamp supermarkets buying enough food to feed the first battalion of the Royal Stand Backs,  but all being web-savvy booked or reserved as many home delivery slots as they could, apparently this was done by opening a slot selecting a few items and then cancelling it later, if necessary meaning lesser mortals had to wait sometimes over two weeks for a delivery.

His next worry was his repeat medication prescription, how would he get that he asked. A long telephone call with the ‘health centre’ revealed that the doctor was willing to provide the repeat prescription, but it would need to be collected and taken to the pharmacy of his choice. There was I thinking that we had a serious emergency, from which older people and the vulnerable were to be shielded, but prescriptions had to be collected and taken to a pharmacy. Anyway off he went and did what he was asked, nipping into the supermarket on the way home, there he was met with some courtesy and common sense by the door security person, who said although this was N.H.S key workers hour, as he was a senior citizen he could, if he wished ‘ jump the queue as it were.  He was surprised to hear that it wasn’t very busy with NHS key workers most mornings and when it was quiet they asked older people if they would like to go in, surprisingly he said, he was told that many people so asked had refused to ‘ shop with NHS workers’  and there was I thinking that everyone supported the ‘heroes’, but were shunning the chance to be in the same area as them.