Category Archives: Op-eds

My favourite Gertrude Jekyll rose has just come into bloom again in my garden

Garden Centres opened again yesterday. I was pleased to spot my much-loved local one, Chessington Garden Centre, in news reports. Photos of the coronavirus testing centre next door to it at Chessington World of Adventures keep cropping up in the media, so I guess one or other is putting Chessington firmly on the Covid-19 map.

As soon as lockdown was imposed Chessington Garden Centre started online sales for the first time. Last month the BBC noted that it was livestreaming gardening advice on Facebook. In fact, it is an independent family run business that has always been innovative, experimental and deeply wedded to the local community throughout its 60 year history. It has a laudable environmental policy, which includes an onsite reed bed system for re-using water, a green roof, and an 81% waste recycling rate. As local councillors committed to sustainable working we held them up as an example to other local businesses. What is more, each year they run the best Santa’s grotto for miles around.

Now I’m quite happy to confirm that I am not a gardener. In some ways I wish I did enjoy weeding and seeding, because I can see what pleasure it brings to people. Gentle exercise in the open air, surrounded by beautiful blossoms and scents, not to mention the pleasure of eating food you have nurtured from seed – what’s not to like?

Today is our younger grandson’s 11th birthday and we have been invited to his Zoom party – in fancy dress. I have been challenged to go dressed as my son, his father.

Luckily, I still seem to have a lot of things in the house that belong to my two sons, even though they both moved out over 20 years ago, and I have managed to unearth an old school tie and blazer. The blazer is rather small and would fit my grandson now, so I will have to sling it across my shoulder instead of wearing it. But a white shirt and tie will help me to look the part. My hair will be the big giveaway, of course, but I’m not going to dye it.

I have also discovered how to do backgrounds for a Zoom call. And the BBC has been enormously helpful in releasing some wonderful photos of empty sets that you can download and use. And joy! – I have found one of a classroom at Grange Hill, which will provide a suitable backdrop to my schoolboy efforts. It also brings back happy memories of the days when my sons were young and deeply in awe of a member of the wider family who played one of the teachers in Grange Hill.

You can brighten up your Zoom meetings by relocating to the Strictly ballroom, the Queen Vic, Fawlty Towers or the Ab Fab champagne fridge.  And – for Lib Dems everywhere – there are six, yes six, different Tardis interiors.

Amazingly, our bin collections have continued as normal during lockdown. I can remember what happens when they are not collected over a long period of time, so am really grateful that the service has not been curtailed.

During the Winter of Discontent (1978-79) waste was not picked up for around 4 weeks. Piles of smelly rubbish appeared on the streets and rats were seen. There was no recycling in those days, so food waste was mixed in with plastic and paper. We were encouraged to “Burn or bury all you can” – a rather unfortunate public message to appear on the gates of the local cemetery and crematorium.

Refuse collection is an unpleasant and physically challenging job, and I have huge respect for the people who do it. But I was alarmed this morning to see that our local teams were exposing themselves to high levels of risk. Not only are they handling waste which could well be infected with the virus, but they do not have masks or disposable gloves. Even more worrying is the fact that they are unable to socially distance themselves while working.

Bin collectors have reported that they don’t feel safe when working.

Whilst any moves towards normality are to be welcomed, I have found all the talk about exiting lockdown rather depressing. Everyone else seems to be demob happy (as well as confused, but that’s another story), but for a couple of million of us in the UK life will not change at all for a very long time.

At least 1.5 million people in the UK have been told to shield themselves, initially for 12 weeks, because they are clinically extremely vulnerable. Someone like me, who does not have health issues but who lives with an extremely vulnerable person, has two options. I can behave like the rest of the UK under lockdown, and go out for exercise, shopping or work. But if I do that then my husband has to self-isolate from me in our own home. We would have to sleep in separate bedrooms and keep 2 metres apart at all times. So it’s not surprising that I have chosen the second option, which is to adopt the same shielding practices as him.

In fact, we had already embarked on strict self-isolation a couple of weeks before the term ‘shielding’ was used in this context.

As a result our home feels very safe.  Any risk to us comes through the front door – post, food deliveries and parcels. As the technically unshielded person I deal with these, bearing in mind how long the virus can remain on surfaces. I can’t be sure that people who pack or deliver anything are coronavirus-free so we have adopted some strategies to minimise the risk.

Non-food parcels are put in quarantine on the doormat for 48 hours, before I open them.

When post arrives I use a grabbing device that we inherited from a relative to turn the post over, and work out who it is from.  Most letters are also left in quarantine by the front door for two days, unless it is something that needs to be read immediately, such as a letter from the hospital.  In those cases I open the envelope and drop the letter to the floor without touching it, then pop the envelope in recycling and wash my hands before picking up the letter. I reckon the letter itself will be clean because it will have been prepared at least 48 hours earlier.

I go through a similar routine with our newspaper which arrives each morning in a potato starch bag. The bag goes straight into the food caddy and I wash my hands. The processes of printing and bundling newspapers are largely automatic so I assume that they are safe.

Food deliveries are another story. Many items have to be put in the fridge or freezer immediately, so quarantining is not an option. I just wipe everything down with antiseptic wipes, even though I know that may not remove all viruses.

The Covid-19 recovery strategy issued today distinguishes between clinically vulnerable and clinically extremely vulnerable groups. This was not particularly clear in the past.

I have just learnt about an excellent initiative set to spread across the country, that was started by some people in my area. (Hat tip to my MP, Ed Davey).

It’s a simple idea – support local independent businesses by paying forward. Buy online vouchers now and redeem them when the businesses are functioning properly again post-lockdown. Vouchers also make great gifts – birthday presents are a bit of a challenge at the moment.

The BE A LOCAL HERO website brings together businesses and customers.  If you have a small business then register on the site and you will be visible to anyone searching in the area. If you want to buy vouchers then you can do a postcode search to see which companies near you are participating.

This project is still very new, and so far around 33 businesses have registered. They include pubs like Tribeca in Manchester, restaurants like Tradizione in Cambridge, cafes like Surbeanton in Surbiton, therapists like Therapy On Performance in Loughborough, attractions like Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean, plus all kinds of shops and even a wedding venue – in other words, a wide range of offers.

This week we unexpectedly received an emergency food package from the Government.

My husband is on the extremely vulnerable list, which opens up a number of options for help with shopping. When he initially registered on the Government’s website he did not tick the box which asked whether he needed help with shopping. We were managing to access supplies and had friends and neighbours who had offered to help.

But getting a delivery from a supermarket was still a challenge, and I sometimes spent hours refreshing the screen in the hope of spotting a new delivery slot.  The supermarket sites were saying that they would be contacting people on the Government’s list to offer them priority for deliveries, but that never happened to us.

Then the penny dropped – maybe we needed to tick the box to say that we did need help with shopping. So we did that and very soon we got two different emails offering us priority delivery slots. Then a large box arrived – the Government’s supply – which to be honest, we really didn’t need. So we have donated it to the local food bank via a friend.

We are trying to work out how to continue to get supermarket priority delivery slots, but not the emergency food package, which will now be delivered every week, it seems. The best advice I have been given is to ask the driver to take it back next time and cross us off the local list.

I am not exactly sure who puts these packages together, but I believe that Councils are responsible for co-ordinating them through a local hub. Huge thanks go to everyone involved in providing this valuable service, which is, no doubt, really useful to some people, especially to those not online.

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I was born a few weeks after VE Day, but before VJ Day which marked the end of global warfare in 1945. At the time my father was in India serving as an Army Chaplain with the Gold Coast regiment and he didn’t actually get home to see me until the following summer.

My parents rarely talked about the war, and it was years before I learnt anything at all about my father’s time in India and Ghana. In fact, their generation just wanted to get back to normal life and protect children from information about the atrocities. We weren’t taught anything about the two World Wars in school, either. It was a shock, many years later, to learn about the Holocaust and the Blitz in the Second War, and about the slaughter in the trenches in the First War.

We were to have happy childhoods, unlike the generation just before us. Things didn’t get back to normal straightaway, though. There were still food shortages and ration books.

I used to hate Remembrance Sunday in those days.  I started writing to a German penfriend in my teens (and we are still very much in touch), so I was uncomfortable with its latent anti-German sentiment.  It was left to my generation to build the bridges with our former enemies, and that included the European project.