Dim days and Covid volunteering

 All last week the days were dim and I would have just hibernated, but now I have the answer. It's a bright LED therapy light. I put it on one side of my desk and I am not looking at it but I am very conscious of it. The idea is that you have it on for about 2 hours a day in the morning, but I just put it on when I need it because the day is dull. So far it has helped a lot with my sleep patterns. 

Last week we volunteered every morning at the Woking vaccination centre. On the second day (Wednesday) we had to do lateral flow tests (putting a stick up our nostrils and twirling -ugh!) and they were negative, but as we all know the tests are only 75% reliable. The first day we were there was extremely busy and we were quite overwhelmed with trying to manage the flow of patients. No one took much of a break for the 4 hours we were there. (8am -12noon) It was strange to get up so early - still dark when we got up. One of our fellow volunteers was a guy called Alex we liked a lot as he was so willing to clean everything - and so good with wheelchair-users. There were 4 wheelchairs that had been supplied from here and there and must have been in a dusty cupboard. So the wheelchair users had to go in at the exit, which was a ramp, and someone inside has to sign to the exit volunteer that someone is coming up the ramp. On the third day, we got the jab ourselves because there was some terrible glitch in the bookings system and we just didn't have enough oldies coming. Our administrator got in touch with the Bustler drivers (very jolly people) and NHS receptionists and schools that could send teachers in the evening - also staff from Sainsbury's - anyone who would benefit rather than throw away the precious fluid - it was the Pfizer vaccine which apparently only keeps for three days out of the freezer. Eventually, more oldies started to come and in the evening, apparently, it was a pile-up with a long queue out of the door. 

After the four mornings, we were beginning to feel like a team, and the doctors/nurses/administrators were all treating us like regulars, which of course we were. But the jobs are quite boring and we were ready for a break, so the next week we signed up to one shift each, and mine was at Walton.

At Walton we had a shift lead, Rachel K whom we know well because of rowing, there to brief all the new people about what to do, how to keep the flow of people organised. I felt quite sorry for the vaccinators - three at Walton, as we sent along one patient after the other with no respite for hours. At Woking, there were four vaccinators and they took turns to go into a side kitchen and make hot drinks, which they had at their desks. The slowest part is having the patients wait for 15 minutes after their injections to see if they have a funny turn. We got quite a pile-up of people, and their chairs (we had a good supply of chairs) got steadily closer together. I tried hard to keep them 1 metre apart. 

I was not able to sanitise the chairs of the 15-minute waiters as they were taken so quickly but I was busy sanitising other chairs and they could see I was doing my best. The guidance has changed a bit. Now we are only supposed to sanitise the chairs after every fifth bottom or thereabouts. This because we were running out of virus-killing wipes. This will stop the volunteers from cleaning like mad as there was quite a competition to see who could be the most fastidious cleaner of chairs. 

At Walton, where there is plenty of space upstairs for the volunteers to have time out, there is also a competition to see who can be the most benevolent volunteer. One volunteer brought in a cake. Another brought in a coffee machine. Another retaliated with a microwave oven. Rachel K went and got a discount from a coffee shop for all the volunteers. And so it goes on. They have What's App groups for both venues so I know what's going on, and it makes me smile, but today I thought, in these awful times when we have so little in the way of a community, people are desperate to form a community, a sisterhood even. But what I didn't much like about Walton was the other volunteers being young and rather superior women. One of them took my Hi-Viz gilet off me although I had brought it with me. These young women are very forceful and I just have to do what they tell me. But, in revenge, I don't like them.

All this is being done through the NHS and they are doing it really well, unlike the private companies which did Test and Trace and basically didn’t Trace anyone. £18 billion to Serco, apparently, for f. all. 

We have not been through this before

Awake at 4 in the morning, and there being no prospect of sleeping, I realised that there is a reason for disturbed sleep, in that our lives are disturbed and we are all probably anxious, even the children, because we haven't been this way before, and this is very serious.

I worry about the economy at the best of times, and now I can see only too clearly that business cannot easily recover from this awful stagnation, and that firms are going to have to downsize. My brother was on the phone and told me that when firms need to economize they fire managers - expensive people who add nothing to the bottom line. They don't tend to sack the people who bring in the revenue - those providing the service or making the product unless demand falls. But when the economy really shrinks there is less money and demand falls. And that's where we're headed. So I am having a big worry about that.

More acutely because closer at hand, I am worried about the compound to the allotment shop, because there is not much security and if you are quite nimble you can climb over the gate and help yourself to the items in the compound. These are large items - manure, compost, strulch. You would have to be quite strong to haul them over the gate but it wouldn't be impossible. Anyway, I think that's what's happening. I think about 15 bags of compost have gone missing. I imagine the culprit is one or two of the newer plot-holders, and they raid at night. We do have CCTV but we don't do anything with it. It's a deterrent only. We have always said that when we have a problem we shall review getting a monitor and making it work. Maybe it doesn't work at all?

I calculate a profit margin of about 30% on the goods we sell because there's a lot of wastage on time-limited items and some goods have to make up for those losses.  The price for this kind of compost has gone up, and at present there is practically no profit on it at all! 15 bags is a lot of profit to throw away.

Another worry is Mr M Law, who has written to the Trustees of the Charity protesting about the terms of the Lease, and you feel that he wouldn't do this unless he hated the allotments and everyone there. Although the Trustees have been very reasonable and accommodating to us, someone like ML can really turn things around, as he did before in a way that benefited the allotment association, now he is trying it the other way around. I can only assume he is the sort of person who likes poking sticks in ants' nests.

All this and COVID-19 too. The Prime Minister has got it now. There is no reason to suppose he will have it badly. But perhaps the news made me think of him and his pregnant girlfriend in Number Ten, and that's unprecedented too. He doesn't behave like a respectable man. I didn't trust him on the economy (because leaving the EU doesn't make economic sense) and now the economy will probably tank anyway, as the world economy will be so damaged. The kind of things that will damage us include that there won't be jobs for our young people, and unlike the Poles and Hungarians I used to teach, our young people tend not to be the kind that just go abroad, learn the language and make a new life. They tend to be weak and lazy and terribly dependent on their Mums and Dads.

Oh dear, I am feeling low. Maybe this is all because of ML being such a sod, and those 15 bags of compost!