LIFE IN ISOLATION 5

Yesterday was my first shift as an NHS volunteer as part of the Royal Voluntary Service. Reading my training material, I found out that it was founded in 1938  to help with almost every aspect of wartime life. Today, the Royal Voluntary Service adapts to meet the needs of the day, in this case co-ordinating volunteer drivers to pick people up from hospitals, deliver PPE or like me, to keep in touch with people in 12 week isolation by calling them to check in and chat. My first shift was uneventful as the service has only soft launched so only a few volunteers are being sent alerts, but I should start getting busy next week.

Besides logging on for duty online yesterday, I spent some time using my network to source fabric for an ex-colleague who is co-ordinating a group of seamstresses to make scrubs for the NHS. I managed to find suitable fabric here if anyone else is looking and happens to read this. After doing that I watched Matt Hancock (the Health secretary) say on BBC Question Time that there is more than enough PPE in the country it's just stored in a warehouse and there is an issue with distributing it! I am completely confused by the government narrative at the moment. Last week they celebrated 750k people signing up to volunteer when only 250k were needed, so why aren't they using them? For this reason, I'm really only dipping in and out of news at the moment. I find a lot of it very depressing and frustrating to watch, not least because I don't feel confident in our government's ability to do the right thing. I really hope I'm wrong.

For the last two days I haven't left the house at all and I definitely feel worse for it, so I'm looking forward to a long walk today. People are already starting to talk about what happens when we come out of quarantine. For example, if we were lucky enough not to contract Covid-19 up until that point, what happens next? Do we resume our normal lives but continue living in constant anxiety, washing hands etc? There has already been talk of immunity certificates or even wristbands for people who have recovered. That's way too close to the plot of a movie for me...