The supermarket did me no
favours in doing me a favour on the morning of Friday the 20th of
March. I’d received an invitation on Thursday the 19th. We’ll get to
that.
For two weeks, I’d not received a basic pack
of toilet roll in the online supermarket delivery from Asda. The name of the
supermarket here is irrelevant – for the problem is generic. The supermarket
could be called Cornucopia Incorporated
for all the difference it makes to panic-buying.
All the people who panic-bought toilet roll
can shove it up their arseholes – one entire roll at a time. No, I don’t mean
that – after all, I’m not here to fuel the fires of your kink. If that’s your
kink.
Let’s backtrack to August. I want you to
remember that month. We’ll return to that a lot later. There. It wasn’t much of
a backtrack.
Now let’s consider my position. Full-time
official dementia carer. Ready to deal with any crisis, under-staffed and
over-stressed, 42 hours a day, eight days a week, solving a crisis at 3.00 in
the morning, we never close.
On
Friday the 20th, my Mission Mission
That call-out went ahead, in the end. And in
the end end, my choice was to reject
a visit to Accident & Emergency: to continue with close observation of
recovery, instead.
Just a wee bit o’ background there. And by
that, I mean I am in Scotland
As carers, we don’t usually stockpile. Clear
space is limited and valuable. Being a carer adds all kinds of clutter to your life
as you merge your existence with the existence of the person/people you care
for.
We buy one of the thing we need and one
spare. As soon as we use up the one thing we need, we switch to the spare and
buy in a new spare.
It’s a simple system that works for me, and
worked for me over six years of being a carer. Until now.
There’s a rack hanging off the inside of the
cupboard door at the top of the stairs. It used to hold compact discs. (Raid
Wikipedia for news of what those were.) By coincidence, every tier of this
empty rack can hold exactly four toilet rolls. That’s the only reason the rack
hangs there, on the inside of that door.
I fill the top three levels with a
twelve-pack. And I buy a spare wad of toilet rolls, twelve-pack, to fill the
bottom of this rack. Once the rack is half-empty, I buy another spare
twelve-pack. And so it goes. Or so it went.
Food is a separate issue and must be more-strictly
monitored. Dementia kills the savoury appetite, and all you’re left with is a
bag full of sweet options. Soft food. If you aren’t careful, you head into a
near-liquid diet.
That’s the stage we are at. In the company
of others, there’s an attempt to copy what they are doing. Well, if he’s having some of that, I’ll try some of that. Away-from-home
activities like daycare and respite breaks help with appetite in a social
situation.
And that keeps her weight up, so she’s
healthier and better-equipped to fight off minor infections. Being a carer is
all about keeping the cared-for out of hospital. Going ahead with daycare is
beneficial. Yet going to daycare risks being a death-sentence.
Daycare and respite were cancelled on
Wednesday the 18th of March. Attendance figures were dropping
anyway, and it was finally felt that the risks of contracting the disease were
greater than were the benefits of socialising and staving off the worst effects
of dementia.
No institution would recover its reputation
by allowing an entire slice of a care community to blithely fall off into the
void. It was always a question of timing in shutting down. My mother had her
last day in daycare on that Wednesday.
By all accounts, she had a great day.
Singing. Engaging in multiple activities. A bit of exercise. Good, given her
recent ambulance call-out. No, that part is none of your business. She had a
great appetite. Socially isolated people had one more day out before the
shutters came down. Risk: low. Effect if risk is compromised: devastating.
A day out, giving me a little time to
myself. That’s all gone. My last respite break of the financial year was
cancelled four days before launch. I expected that. My mother was out to the
daycare on Wednesday. But I was indoors, isolating myself. Taking and making
calls. Preparing.
Carers are always preparing.
This was it. Wednesday. Finally, the start
of the crackdown. I knew I’d have to risk picking toilet roll up from somewhere
soon. The greater the delay, the more advanced the epidemic is. More risk. But
the more advanced the epidemic is, presumably the greater the enforcement of
social isolation. More difficulties to overcome, without risking the health of
others.
Funpocalypse.
I think you are all updated, now. Ambulance
scare on a shitty Friday the 13th. Recovery. Back out and about to
daycare, to gain the benefits of that without keeling over from disease. The
Asda delivery was dropped off as usual, but the crates of food were left
halfway along the path as a precaution.
We all wore gloves as we went into this
retail barn-dance.
Don’t take your delivery driver by the hand, he’s
gloved-up and all contact’s banned,
Step back, step back, two-three-four, and now you’re
at the household door,
Five-and-six-and-seven-eight, the driver’s waiting by
the gate.
No toilet roll. One brand of
pepperoni pizza didn’t make it to the door, so a near-identical pizza came
along instead. I survived the ordeal.
Let’s return to the invitation. E-mails
flurried in from Asda as I updated my order, and then the supermarket updated
me on events. It’s time to stress this, even though you suspected what I’m
about to say…
Online delivery of supermarket shopping is a
lifeline for carers, and was a lifeline for carers BEFORE the Coronavirus
changed everything.
Crisis
or not, I need to be here to deal with the randomness of dementia. Time away
from the house is bundled time…
I can be away from this one-person care-home
for a few hours at a stretch. Much can be handled online. The rest of life has
to be dealt with out there and in person. So I bundle tasks into one visit to
town. And I race around town like a blue-arsed fly on a Mission
Social isolation is the norm for carers. But
I was forced to be more social this week, instead of less-so.
On a general note concerning disease,
limiting social interaction by using online deliveries is especially helpful during
the winter and flu season…given that the housebound are often left to the
tail-end of the flu vaccine cycle. Invitation goes out as early as the start of
October. The nurse turns up looking windswept and harassed in January.
My exposure to risk right now is supposed to
be limited to the daily carer visitors who assist with bathing seven days a
week, 85 weeks a year. Back in the depths of winter, one carer told me they
were 400 bodies under capacity. And illness in winter wasn’t helping those
numbers.
Daily care is hampered by cutting off annual
holiday leave by the first of January, instead of carrying on through to the
usual March/April limit for taking your holidays. The rush to take any unused
holidays falls right in the heart of winter as a result.
Daily carers tell me they don’t want to let
the cared-for down by taking time off and upsetting regular routines. Burn-out
is a thing.
But that’s a detour into another topic. I am
simply explaining that, at absolute minimum, I have human contact with my
mother and no one else if the daily care system has a meltdown. That happened
three times this year, and I just had to get on with it.
You revert to the old-fashioned way of
dealing with things when you were an unofficial carer. I can go back to doing
it all that way, but, obviously, I prefer not to if there’s a support system in
place.
Okay. So. It’s two people in person, per
day. Regular routine. Minimal chance of disease coming into the house, but a
chance that is a daily one. Daily carers, dentists, doctors, nurses, all
developed ungodly skills in slapping those fiddly rubber gloves on. Mad skills.
I was socially isolating while you were all searching
the internet for articles on the phrase. And I wish you didn’t have to search
the internet for the phrase, or gain a glimpse into the isolated life, but here
we are.
You’ve all caught up with the world of the
carer. And that’s the problem. Social isolation is, absurdly, a popular sport.
It’s the thing that forced me to be more social than usual. And it’ll force me
to be more social until new measures kick in.
So. This invitation.
Asda’s head honcho isn’t called Bob Burger,
but I’ve misremembered him as that. Sue me.
Oh, he should be called that. And work at Burger King. Maybe not. Avoid
being in the military under Captain Kilgore, Corporal De’Ath, and Sergeant Dye.
(The last one’s in Platoon. I don’t make everything up.)
Anyway, Roger Burnley, who isn’t Bob Burger
or Sergeant Dye, invited me to shop early on Friday.
…we are going to make our
larger stores available for those vulnerable people – and those caring for
them, to let them shop and get what they need.
So – if you’re in a
vulnerable group and need to get your shopping – or are caring for someone in a
vulnerable group, we’ll do everything we can to support you in stores on Friday
morning before 9am.
This was my toilet roll
invitation. The head honcho went on to invite all other shoppers to fuck the
fuck off until later and not hog the supplies. That’s a rough quote, but you
get the gist of it.
As a carer you must have
plans. And those plans need to be flexible. It’s the only way to survive as a
carer. Have systems in place, and stand ready to vault over those systems to
save the day in another way. Important concept: flexibility. Be the Keanu of
limbo dancing, and dodge every bullet The
Matrix throws at you.
What I do is rewarding. But I wouldn’t wish
it on anyone.
I set the alarm for 7.00 and woke up just
seconds before it went off. Sunny day. Frosty as hell. Winter feeling, like a
November day with a clear sky the night before. But flowers in the garden tell
you that it is March. And so I marched. Off I went into town, avoiding people
who weren’t there. A lot of people weren’t there, and I was glad of that. However…
A few people were there. Dog-walkers,
mostly. I timed my trip so that I would arrive as close to the opening of the
supermarket as possible. That way, I wouldn’t linger in a crowd. Above all
else, I couldn’t be late. But being early to a crowd carries weightier risks.
Yes, as expected, a small crowd gathered.
All with shopping trolleys at the ready. Elderly people. Carers. One or two
chancers.
I sat on the seat no one bothered with. It
was frosted over, except at the edges. I sat in my waterproof jacket for a
minute or two as very thin ice melted beneath me. Sat down dry. Stood up dry. A
barrier protected me.
Where was the barrier protecting the crowd,
here? People walked right up out of nowhere, expecting the place to be open,
not taking in the crowd. This guy. Strolling right to the closed doors and
pausing, puzzled, as he expected the supermarket cave to open, Sesame Seed Bun.
There was movement at the doors. Two sets of
sliding doors. One set stayed blocked off. I could see something through there.
Looked like huge stacks of flowers on trays on trolleys. And this guy is
expecting that blocked entrance to open for him.
This is when the Triffids pop out to get
you. But no. The blocked doorway is a locked doorway. No plant avalanche. We are
in the presence of the announcer. He’s there to explain the non-zombie
non-apocalypse to us.
The announcer stepped out and asked the
elderly, the vulnerable, to step forward first. Under normal circumstances, I’d
be polite and go to the very back of the crowd. But I represented an elderly
vulnerable person, and I marched in with purpose.
Easy to do, with no trolley and a light list.
I calculated that there’d be enough rationed toilet roll for everyone, no
matter where I stood in the queue. But if I moved forward when asked, I would
avoid the phantom cougher at the back of the crowd. And that was most important
to me.
Yes, the supermarket offered a solution of
sorts. But it was clearly a diluted solution at best. People most at risk were
asked to gather in a coughing spluttering crowd on a frosty morning and gamble
on their ability to carry shopping away.
I could have rolled my mother in there by
wheelchair, but why the hell expose her to the risk? And disturb her sleep.
Upset her routine. No. I was wrapped up against the cold, lowering my risk of
taking a sneeze from someone in the crowd.
Strolling all the way into town – no, public
transport is not a wise option – I kept looking out for rabid dog-walkers and
their non-rabid dogs. Didn’t want to be ambushed by a sneezer, coming around a
corner.
I’d just missed passing a woman with a
handkerchief to her face. Presumably, she was protecting me from something. She
had to be better-wrapped against incoming droplets to protect herself.
Trip made in safety. Doors opened.
Announcement made. The plan? Grab the toilet roll. And grab a cinnamon bun pack
as a fucking treat for going through this necessary unnecessary ordeal. Pick up
two bottles of strawberry milk…essential part of the liquid diet, and one of
the few things she’ll take. Grab some banknotes from the machine, for the rare
cash transaction. If anyone’s even accepting notes and coins, now, that is.
Order a phone top-up. Run for home.
What were the risks?
Fucking huge, if I stood next to the phantom
cougher. And also fucking huge if someone from daycare silently passed some
shit on to asymptomatic me, myself, and I. The trip to town was a two-way
apocalypse if I carried the disease to the most vulnerable in the supermarket.
With daily carers in the mix, I am never
going to know if I am free of the disease. Every morning, take a deep breath
and hold for a count of ten. With no coughs and no splutters, with the ability
to hold a breath, I am free of the symptoms of the disease. But there’s still
no guarantee, short of testing.
There were, clearly, one or two chancers in
the crowd. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The rule is simple. When you
open up your shop for carers and see a bunch of people, those are the carers.
That’s what we look like. A mixed bunch, in all shapes and sizes. Sadly, in the
case of some, the carers are the same age and at the same risk as the
cared-for.
I followed a snaking trail of elderly people
with trolleys. We went, conga-style, to the toilet roll section. The cold air
made me cough a few times outdoors. I stopped all that bullshit as I reached
the supermarket. No sudden sharp intakes of breath.
Rations. Two
small packs or one big one, the supermarket employee tells us. We are in a
toilet roll mine. I feel the narrowness of the aisle, as pensioners hem me in
with their trolleys. If one person sneezes, we are all screwed.
I just
don’t buy packs of 24 toilet rolls. But here I am, forced to buy one. This is
not a panicky purchase. It’s being flexible in planning. Changing routine to
deal with altered circumstances. Price does not come into this. I don’t care
what the price is. No one cares what the price is. Everyone wants to avoid
wiping their arses on broken glass. Or newsprint,
as it is known in the trade.
Toilet roll. It does exist. In the form of a
pack.
I picked up a huge one. A store assistant
was there to tell me I could only have one of those. I was quite cheery in
replying that I only needed one of those. People who hoarded toilet roll
created this crisis. Also, those people cannot judge their weekly use of loo
rolls. Are they planning to wipe their arses on it or toast individual sheets
for breakfast?
The woman was varying her message, but she
knew there were no troublemakers. She went on to tell other people that, on the
tills, you’d be told to leave excess products behind if you tried to take more
than the limit.
I
navigated around elderly people, trying to minimise contact. The goal was a
24-pack. I can’t remember the last time I bought a 24-pack. It’s a ridiculous
size to manhandle. Barely fits inside my big bag.
Big bag was folded inside large backpack.
Part of my flexible plan. I had no plan for dealing with no toilet roll.
The elderly struggled with their supplies. This
is why they were offered two small ones as an alternative. It’s also why you
can’t take trollies away from supermarkets. The elderly wouldn’t cope. Once
they were clear of the shopping trolley with the loot rolls, what then? The
best of luck to them. Older people, staggering away under the burden of 24
toilet rolls, disappearing into the cold morning. Not a good solution. But
we’re all aiming for any port in a shit-storm. This is what unites us. Basic
bodily functions around the elimination of waste.
Toilet
roll goal accomplished. Next. Cinnamon bun pack. This was to cheer me up. If I
am forced into town for any reason, on all sorts of business, I try to arrange
a treat to go with coffee.
That is trivial and important at the same
time. I can see that you are nodding in agreement. Being a carer is often overwhelming
outside a crisis, and I need a seat with a coffee…and then I can get back to it
all. Especially if I’ve been out and about dealing with different places and
demands on multiple systems.
Multiply the importance of coffee in an
actual crisis.
As I type this up, I am waiting on a phone
beep to tell me the prescriptions are in. Not short of pills today. I can leave
it all for another day, even if they beep me. (They didn’t beep me. And this is
one more thing to add to the list of things to do.)
Right, what else was on the supermarket list?
Two bottles of strawberry milk. Just in case. (As it turned out, a wise move.)
No basket. I didn’t want to touch the
baskets. But I don’t take baskets anyway – my emergency supermarket shopping is
always light on items, given that the main shopping is done online. We’ll
return to that.
I balanced the cinnamon two-pack on top of
the 24-pack toilet roll and carried two bottles of strawberry milk in my other
hand. All the while, I checked for signs of people sneezing. I reached the
self-service checkout without bumping into Typhoid Mary. Announcements came
over the tannoy about helping people out and measures in place. I scanned the
items. Then I hit the snag. Gloves.
In winter, I carry spare gloves with me.
Woollen ones. My waterproof ones, a bit on the small side, saw me through this
winter – they are starting to feel it, now. Good, while they lasted. I mean
damned good. Great in a deluge.
But.
I sat those waterproof gloves on the kitchen
counter to grab when dealing with ungloved parcel people who insisted on
handing stuff to me. Easy access to gloves on the counter, no matter which door
the parcel came to. Also very handy gloves for supermarket delivery crates.
When I left the house I was on a timer. And I remembered those gloves were on
the counter.
Here are my rules for leaving the house.
Make sure your keys are in your pocket. And make sure your zip is up. Never
return to the house for something you’ve forgotten unless it is ESSENTIAL. Time
was a big factor. No telling how long traffic would hold me up. I couldn’t go
back for the gloves. Not while I had spare gloves in my coat pocket. I slipped
those on and went into town. With my keys in my pocket and my zip up, thanks
for asking.
Bright sunny day. The gloves gradually
warmed. And here I was at the touch-screen. Didn’t work. Well, shit. Wool is
crap for those screens. My other gloves might have worked. We’ll never know.
What was in my favour? I hadn’t picked the
very first till. The staff cleaned the touch-screens. I was practically the
first person there, making a transaction. The virus doesn’t live long on
cardboard – so parcels are quite safe. Beware the delivery people, though.
And glass screens? Fuck. I had to risk it.
Maybe a pen would have worked on the screen. That occurs to me now, many hours
later. Perhaps a pen would damage the screen. Faffing about is no good in a
crisis. Risk is risk. Evaluate, and act. If you act wrongly, too bad. Hope that
there is a next time and act rightly next time. Emphasis on a next time.
I put the order through. Couldn’t use
contactless payment – there’s a cash limit of £30 for contactless transactions,
and I was taking out £50 in cash for emergencies. Always calculate the cost of
a taxi home, and carry more cash than that estimate.
The deed was done. I unfolded the big bag
and packed toilet roll away. Then I slipped milk and cinnamon buns into the
backpack. Cash to pocket. I moved away from there to an isolated space at the
front of the shop.
That’s where I fished out the phone top-up
card. E-mail is the thing for getting the word out. Letters occasionally come
and go. Phone-use is minimal. I’ve never been a fan of phones, especially with
other electronic options available. But for a carer, the phone is essential. To
cover that angle, I use a pay-as-you-go phone. It is the supermarket’s own
service.
No fancy phone that came out two minutes
ago. And no contracts. Just a basic Android phone with a top-up card. This
time, I could use contactless
payment. So I did. I slapped £30 into the phone account and…I’ll be good for utterly ever on that credit.
And that’s about it. Everything on the list.
I leave for home by the most isolated route possible, and I don’t get run over.
Children started appearing. School is
officially over, but I guess as I walk along that some children – those of
essential workers – are packed off to school as a form of daycare just to keep
the system going. Dodging people on the streets, I made it home.
When walking home, you get into the last
five minutes. A special time. No matter what the world threw at you, you know
in five minutes you have a place to go to for a spot of rest. I unpacked the
shopping. Made a coffee. Grabbed a chunky KitKat. At least the fridge still
worked.
Never wanted a coffee so much, lately. Just sending
someone off to daycare was stressful, knowing the risk involved. Now, with that
gone, being forced from cover to buy toilet roll, I felt everything.
Every instinct to touch my face. All the
cold air, assaulting my lungs and triggering a cough. Every item I touched with
my gloved hands. The vulnerability in removing a glove to tap a glass screen.
Never wanted a coffee so much. Well, I had it.
I’m typing this up a million years later. No
symptoms. Means nothing. A fresh face came in for daily care. She was covering
for people off sick. If you are part of the daily care system and you catch a
cold, that’s it. You are done. Stay home. Wait it out. Isolate.
The daily carer was upstairs, explaining to
a dementia sufferer that her son was taking good care of her, and was very
organised. I won’t feel organised if I am the one who tracks the disease home.
And I didn’t feel organised with very little food in the house. The fluid diet
is a perishable one. I’d be okay on ready meals and fossilised fish, as I don’t
have dementia – I can take the taste of savoury foods. Freezing flavoured milk
isn’t really an option.
After dealing with the invisible threat
while shopping at the supermarket, morning routine was easy. I took phone calls
confirming places were shut. Daycare is done for months. I’ll receive a letter.
Two calls about respite came through. I received a bill for the last break.
There’ll be a letter from that place, too.
(A letter arrived making the daycare closure
official. I may receive more telephone calls on that front. The respite centre
could be turned into an isolation area to protect the most vulnerable, so I am
told.)
Daily care continues. One daily carer told
me a supermarket was booked out to the start of April online. My mission for
toilet roll was a great success. I knew, as soon as I went looking online, my
good mood would change.
And now we come closer to that flashback to
August. Not quite yet.
I charged my phone. Coffee and a cinnamon
bun. Really needed every coffee. Haven’t even looked at coffee stocks. I have
enough for a little while. The supermarket situation is fucking grim. Whether
online or in person, customers are now limited to three of each item. Plenty of
stuff is out of stock online. That’s a permanent electronic entry on certain
items.
I worked my way around the problem as best
as I could. There are two different puddings that help to make up meals. No, I
wouldn’t describe them as solid. Liquid diet is liquid. What a shocker. I could
order three of one and three of the other. The weekly milk supply is a little
trickier, as there are only a few different brands of strawberry milk.
And so it went, as I tested the online
ordering system for robustness. Order an extra one of these things. Buy in a
few of those things. Normally, I do this electronic shopping on Saturdays. But
I had to test it out ahead of the usual routine. Final tally? A larger order.
More items revealed as unavailable.
Then the booking.
Holy
shit. As expected, everything gone until the start of April. I booked it
anyway, not expecting to get any of it. Instantly, more items came up as out of
stock. I don’t think I’ll see much of that order coming in. And here’s why.
The offline locusts thought, in a large
crowd, the same stupid thought. I’ll just
order it online. The thought being…that
helps with social distancing. Yes, but it is a digital form of stockpiling,
even when limited to three items a shot.
Online supermarket ordering isn’t built to
support EVERYONE turning up as a customer at once. Before the crisis, online
supermarket delivery was a lifeline to carers. Well, the lifeline snapped.
We’ve been elbowed out of the way by EVERYONE and their dogs.
Yes, if you order online you are engaged in
social distancing. But your food still comes off the same shelves in the same supermarket.
I’ve seen the pickers take their crates around and fill orders right off the shelves.
So if you order wall-to-wall deliveries out
of the supermarket, the customers in the shop will take what’s there before
your order is anywhere near being fulfilled. Opening hours are already
curtailed so that cleaners and shelf-stackers can maintain the pace. And it
isn’t enough.
There’ll be a lot of disappointed people
ordering online. My good mood fizzled out. Social isolation is going to force
me to be less isolated, as I must journey forth to pick up supplies more
regularly. Can’t buy a week’s supply. Might not even be able to buy anything.
Guess the physical exercise will do me good.
I’ll be wary of the coughing spluttering people in the morning crowd. There is
no point queuing early on Saturday. It’ll be like Ben-Hur, with the chariots racing around to the toilet roll.
At least I have an emergency supply of
packet soup. There was a tinned deal on, and I stopped eating the packets as I
took in tins. Don’t eat the packets – they are of foil-backed paper, and I
doubt they are truly edible.
Online supermarket delivery was there for
us, at those odd hours. Being a carer means being handed odd hours. You fit
things in as and when. I think
nothing of posting letters at midnight, as it is the most convenient time for
me – no interruptions.
It’s true that, on a quiet day, I’ll
encounter two people in person. But it’s also true that I’ll have to deal with
many departments in the system, and they’ll all want to dive in on the same
day, at hourly intervals. Suddenly I meet a dozen people.
It is
difficult to limit activity when you are already socially isolated. Every
contact that’s left is a vital contact that could kill you. My carer lifeline,
Asda online delivery, is broken, forcing me to risk far more contact than is
good for anyone.
So
let’s talk about August. Last August. The August before. Doesn’t really matter.
There’s this thing that was arranged between government and businesses. The businesses
are power companies who don’t want to look like complete and utter bastards to
the elderly in winter. And so there’s a scheme.
The Warm Home Discount Scheme.
Participating power companies run this
scheme with the government standing in the wings to explain it all to you. You
must be eligible. If you qualify, then you receive a discount off your
gas/electricity bills. Every August, barring technical glitches, you can apply
and there’ll be a discount off your bill come March at the latest.
Yes, you have to be aware of it. And yes,
you must apply with details to hand. Yes, my mother applies for this every
year. I do all the pointing and clicking and typing on her behalf. When there
was a technical glitch, we fixed it over the phone and we were even added to a
register of vulnerable clients.
Well. There you go. A safety-net, of sorts,
for vulnerable groups. I want something like that for online supermarket
deliveries. When EVERYONE ordered online at the supermarket, my earliest order
was pushed over a fortnight out. All the regular carers were instantly excluded
from the system. The most vulnerable were hit hardest, with no way around the
problem…except to complain directly to the supermarket…clogging up an already
beleaguered help system, I’m sure.
Supermarkets are promising a vague way
through that by identifying vulnerable customers via previous purchases. What
do old people buy that we don’t? Denture products. Doesn’t make you elderly.
Not if you had your teeth knocked out in your teenage years and you are 21 now,
for example.
My point there is that so-called elderly
purchases will be buried in non-elderly purchase histories set up by younger
carers in the same household. The supermarket doesn’t have access to your
pension details in quite the same way that the government has.
The government gateway explanation leading
into the Warm Home Discount Scheme is a good starting-point. Oh, it’ll take
until the end of all time to implement a priority delivery scheme for
vulnerable groups ordering groceries online. But it should be in place for the
next wave, and the next next wave.
How would you qualify? If you are in receipt
of any care-based benefits, you are bumped to the front of the queue. As more
people in an ever-ageing population end up being looked after, that will one
day constitute the entire queue, I realise.
But we need something that says…we will hold
a slot open for you. Not necessarily a recurring slot, at the exact time every
week…remember what I said about flexible plans. It isn’t always feasible to
accept supermarket deliveries at the same hour on the same day, weekly. Carer
life gets in the way of that. Okay, perhaps a fixed slot is a starting-point.
Anyway, we need a magic ticket that doesn’t
exclude us from the process that we depend on. EVERYONE joined the queue, and
destroyed the concept of the queue. I’ll add this awkward piece, while I am
here…
The imposition of a three-item limit doesn’t
work for carers and the cared-for. In this time of crisis, we must be able to
order the regular one-week shopping we normally order. It’s about not having to
go to the supermarket at all. No
stockpiling. Just ordering week by week, to keep the annoying liquid diet
going.
Couldn’t she take milk that isn’t
strawberry, or try a fish supper? No, she fucking couldn’t. If I can’t order
those five bottles of strawberry milk, I’ll have to order three and then walk
to town for the other two…if they are even in stock. And that’s if I can even
order online. Not being able to order online, I’ll now have to turn up at
opening time twice a week just to buy three milk and two milk the next time.
Social distancing has forced me to be more social over the next two weeks.
Yes, I’ll stand with the elderly crowd as
the sun pretends to warm the day, and I’ll earwig the coughers and splutterers
and hope no one sneezes. I’ll buy a few things for myself so that I can go on
being a carer, and I’ll buy a few things for the cared-for. But I shouldn’t
have to stand in that ever-more-vulnerable crowd at all. I should click a thing
online that says I’ll get a delivery of food that week. And there’ll be a
shitload of the order that is out of stock anyway. I won’t care, as long as
there’s enough food there to keep being a carer. If there isn’t, I won’t be
able to care at all. And the long-evaded trip to hospital will be a short one,
ending in death.
Stay fucking positive. And stay the fuck
away from me. To head honcho Bob Burger at Asda, I know that’s not your name.
S.P. Tranent isn’t my name – I write here under this label to protect the
identities of those who have no say in the matter about being discussed so
openly online.
Anyway, to head honcho at Asda. I’m taking a
wild guess on the notion that you are trying to fix every fucking thing
connected to your business, and this is one more thing to do. Welcome to the
world of being a carer, where there is always one more thing to do – and it
turns into many things by default.
Create a priority online order system for
the vulnerable. And when you do, consider relaxing the three-item limit imposed
on others. Carers are not hoarders. We live week by week…and now it is so much
harder to do that. I’m meant to stay isolated for twelve weeks now. Help
achieve that goal.
To the Scottish Government. Conjure a
government gateway out of thin air, as supermarkets aren’t in the business of
storing benefit details. Connect the officially vulnerable with the vital food
supply that we all know exists. The food is out there. It just has to come to
us in an organised fashion.
I ask not for myself, but on behalf of
someone who only vaguely understands that “therrr’s a bug gawin’ aboot…”
If you missed it in all this waffle, I want
vulnerable people to have a priority slot for weekly grocery deliveries from
supermarkets. Not a guarantee of every item on the list…for there’s a
substitution every week even when there isn’t a crisis. Just get enough to us
to keep going. The alternative is that we roam and forage and spread the
disease. We can’t stand in crowds of elderly people, coughing away, thinking
this is a solution to dealing with hoarders.
I must stop here, and rush off to read an
e-mail on what the power company is doing for us in these trying times. Makes a
change from the spam e-mails by companies looking to brighten my day with
special virus offers. You can keep those to yourselves, for a start, you
chancers.
To finish on, I’ll say that my toilet roll
system usually allows for fourteen toilet rolls in the house at a minimum.
Twelve on the rack. One in the bathroom. And one in the toilet. When I went to
check on the situation, the bathroom and toilet rolls were all but done, and I
was down to nine on the rack.
In all these years of dementia care, I’ve
never let it sink to the reserve that way. The reserve is for emergencies.
We’ll race through toilet roll if someone catches cold or a meal throttles the
intestines. And we need that buffer for those emergencies until the next supply
comes through. It didn’t come through for two weeks, and I had to stand in the
crowd of self-isolaters to get a pack. Not daft, I didn’t stick to the usual
twelve-pack, and took what the supermarket allocated to me.
The milk situation is worse. Buy one brand
in full and buy a smaller brand in full and have not quite a week’s supply.
Coronavirus doesn’t care about emotions. Dementia doesn’t give a stuff for the
taste of food that will keep you going. There’s no way to balance these items.
My plan is to chuck Coronavirus into isolation and to call that heavily-clogged
helpline to see if we can come to an arrangement.
But it is worth blogging this. And, sadly,
worth the risk of joining another early-morning queue just to keep someone fed
in the coming week.
Sometimes you have to rant. The thing I’ve
picked up from years of carer isolation is that no one is truly isolated.
Daycare and daily care and respite all carried risks. Daycare and respite are
gone, but daily care struggles along on its knees. We can never eliminate risk.
I’ve watched every carer handle the gloves with style…
And I’ve tried shielding myself with a towel
when my mother spits her toothpaste into the basin I hold over her
hospital-style bed. It just takes a sneeze. Don’t worry. The idiots who, to
this very hour, downplay the crisis…they’ll all be dead, one day. This isn’t
about them. It’s about keeping the rest of us alive to see the other side of
the event.
Yes, I rant. I make light of things. And I
look for the quirky stuff, like the delivery driver barn-dance. I see Dame Vera
Lynn, 103, lived through the pandemic that troubled the world last century.
We are better-equipped to deal with this
one. And our computer-based lifestyle should make social isolation far easier.
Strange, then, that I can’t order food online. I want a Scottish government
portal set up to categorise the vulnerable for online grocery shopping, for
next time if not for this one. More than that, I want negative developments and
positive actions against them to leave this entire rant outmoded as soon as it
is published. Yes, I want to wake up in the morning and discover that there’s
already a fix.
Pessimism is a Scottish pastime. Optimism
also has its uses.
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