Documenting life in South East London, during the 2020 Covid-19 coronavirus global pandemic.
I was a guest this week on LMFM, our local radio station in Ireland. The regular presenter, Michael Reade, was being covered by an old friend, Ken Murray, which was a pleasant surprise.
Being in London this Christmas sucks. A Lot. Not just for me but for a lot of people. Keep an eye for a blog post over the next few days.
Have a listen. Thanks to Marie, Chris and of course, Ken for having me on.
April 28 2020.
It’s been six weeks since St Patrick’s Day. Six weeks and one day since I was last in the office. I’ve left the apartment five times since then. Four times to go to the supermarket, once to go to the park. But now, it’s seventeen days since I left the apartment.
In that time, almost 21000 people have died in the United Kingdom. That’s over 3 times the population of my hometown, Kells, in Co. Meath in Ireland.
About two weeks into all this, I had a conversation with someone about how I genuinely couldn’t understand the tone of the media in the UK. Everything was about the talk of the crisis in Italy and Spain. I couldn’t understand how they were not getting and choosing not look at what was and still is happening on their own doorstep. These figures aren’t just numbers, they are lives.
Now, four weeks later, BoJo is out of hospital and back at work. I wouldn’t wish anyone to be ill with Covid but it does seem that when BoJo was admitted to hospital, that was when the UK government decided it was time to take this seriously.
In my opinion, they were too slow.
I’ve been really lucky during all this. I’m working from home which makes evenings and weekends seem like evenings and weekends.
Myself and Talulah have been getting up every morning, doing a bit on the exercise bike and then doing our bits for the day. The first week or two was all about getting used to the fact that even though I was at home all day, this wasn’t all free time. I still had a days work to do. So Monday – Friday 930-530 aren’t my hours. The extra time I have is the time that I save from not having to commute, which is a godsend. I hate commuting at the best of times.
As I mentioned in my last post, my immune system doesn’t work properly and then isn’t good in pandemic times. It’s also not good that I almost died from smoke inhalation when this Covid-19 thing attacks your lungs.
I attend a rheumatologist in Ireland, one of the reasons is because the medication I take daily, isn’t licensed in the UK. So I registered with gov.uk to say I was in a more high risk group. This has proven to be of immense help as I was then added to the priority list for online grocery shopping. It took a while to happen, but I genuinely have no words to describe how beneficial this has been.
Myself and Talulah initially went to the local Lidl and stocked up on what we could on St Patrick’s Day, during times when we thought that people would still be at work. The only other place we had been was our local Sainsbury’s, which is a small shop, once a week for the next two weeks. The first time was ok, social distancing etc. The second time was crazy. Social distancing measures outside, we queued up to get into the store, but mayhem inside. Plus, there were a lot of items they didn’t have. We ended up ordering all our veg online from a local market supplier.
Three weeks ago, an early Saturday morning visit to Tesco proved very helpful and relaxing but the following week, there were too many people in each aisle. I just wasn’t happy being there.
We’re now getting our groceries delivered on a Friday evening, so it feels like a weekend.
As a side note to this, I had a phone call from the National Screening centre who are monitoring all the people in vulnerable groups. They asked if I was ok, if I had enough supplies, if I needed someone to drop round with a box of food. All extremely nice of them. I don’t need their food boxes, there are more entitled and needy people who deserve to receive these food parcels. Good job though, they will definitely help a lot of people in this shitty situation.
The first couple of weeks of the lockdown were crazy for social media / online activities. I had decided that I would try doing a daily vlog and I would try doing some Insta chats with musicians in the evenings. I found these to be near impossible to do. Not that I didn’t want to chat to these incredibly talented people but I found that are dealing with people during the day and during the difficulties of a pandemic, I was physically drained by the evening and I could just about muster the energy to keep up.
I had hoped I would write more etc etc but as well as doing my day job, I had to chill, decompress and look after myself for a bit.
That hasn’t stopped me in my spare time, working with an artist to help them promote their music using my Nessymon Media moniker. There have been a couple of releases, which have gone down a storm, which is great. It’s a bit of fun and I enjoy it.
However, after six weeks, I do want to write more myself and I do want to try and do more with the blog.
I think in the next post, I will tell you more about what I’ve been doing in the evenings and weekends to keep myself entertained.
March 20th 2020
A lot has happened in a week. A lot has happened in two weeks.
I’m sitting at home, I should be at work. Instead, from Monday, work is coming to me.
I guess I really need to start at the beginning. It’s January and I see on the news about a virus like SARS or Swine Flu that is killing people in China. I hear how it effects them and I quietly start freaking out.
I have a compromised immune system. I take medication every day for this. I’ve wanted to write about this for a while but was always wary of what potential employers would think, even though I don’t miss work for illness. You can never trust people to think like you would.
That changed about three weeks ago. The first cases of coronavirus, or the now named, Covid-19, came to the UK. Once that happened, it was only a matter of time before it sifted out into the ether.
About twenty years ago, I got caught in a house fire. I nearly died. I had severe smoke inhalation and completely scorched by lungs and throat. (I will write about that again). Approximately two years after that, I started getting ill. I got red lumps all over my legs, got bad vertigo, really bad pains in my arms and legs. My immune system had enough.
I’ve now been taking medication for nine years to ensure I can get out of bed and function normally. This puts me in the vulnerable category. There’s no way of knowing how my system would react to getting Covid-19. I always thought the the biggest, baddest thing I had to fight was myself.
I mentioned this to my acting line manager at work who completely understood my reaction to this thing in the news.
As time went on, I became more and more anxious getting the train to work. The peak came on the 16th, I had been getting the early train to work to avoid the rush hour crowds. That meant I was there 90 minutes before I needed to be. However, that morning, a guy on the train behind myself and Talulah just wouldn’t stop coughing. Not a big cough, enough to annoy me and get me to move the other end of the train.
In some ways, I think my conversation at work seemed to bring everything forward a couple of days. Tuesday was going to be St Patrick’s Day. An Irish pubic holiday and I don’t work them. From Wednesday, a skeleton crew would be in the office, with the majority, including myself, working remotely.
Being in London, living away from home does mean a bit of anxiousness and worry about the folks there. My sis is with my Mum and Dad at home. There’s not a whole lot I can do from here, trust that they make the right decisions for themselves and not put themselves in danger.
It’s weird, Mam and Dad are married 50 years next month and Mam wanted to have a ‘gathering’. A few weeks ago, I told Mam I did think she should book anything because everything would be shut down. It genuinely could be months before I get to see them all again. Thank Alanis for the internet!
I’m not sure how much I will blog, but I do think it’s important to document this. Here’s to self isolation.
I’m also doing a little daily vlog on YouTube. You can watch it below. Filmed on my Samsung S8, made to be watched on your mobile.