My rant at an imperfect world
near the end of March was housed inside a crystal ball with a very slow signal.
Now we are in the far-flung future at the start of May, I can report that
deliveries were finally taken in hand.
I played supermarket roulette in the
semi-quiet aisles a few times, making sure the milk supply was secured. My own food
was of secondary importance.
Being frozen out of the supermarket delivery
system as soon as EVERYONE switched to online ordering, I wanted a better
system. One that catered to the vulnerable who depended on the delivery system
as a caring lifeline.
Delivery? It made things so much easier. My
mother, in her shopping days, would never have dreamed of having food
delivered.
Shopping was all about social interaction.
Meeting everyone regularly. Finding out what was happening. Being shocked in
the street at some dreadful news. Laughing herself into knots when informed of
a really truly funny piece of business.
Every facet of life was there, in the trail
of news she absorbed. Shopping, she picked up as a by-product.
Dementia came calling. I allowed her to keep
the shopping routine going until she told me she’d had enough. It was all a bit
too much for her.
I wanted the decision to come from her, so
that I didn’t impose that change on her. You can’t alienate the cared-for right
at the start of the caring process. No good.
People still visited, and there was some
gossip for her to chew on. I didn’t immediately switch over to shopping
deliveries. Why do that? I was the delivery van – minus the vehicle.
If I felt like exercise, I walked to and
from town and hefted a huge bag of food back home. And if I left the
supermarket to discover the weather changed and I was about to be snapped in
three by the jagged teeth of a whale of a gale, then I struggled aboard a
packed bus.
Caring is about caring in the moment.
Medical circumstances change, and you alter one routine after another to cope.
Taking shopping in from a delivery was a
better use of my time. Winter to winter, there were days when I was glad to be
behind the window staring into the gloom as cold rain fell sideways. Best not
to be out in it, even wrapped to Olympic standards.
Home delivery made things a
whole lot easier. Then the pandemic panic came along, and severed the lifeline.
I had one final delivery in my sights that would come weeks later…
And then? Playing roulette in the aisles.
Taking the chance on standing within twenty feet of an absolute zoomer in the
queue. The chatty nervous type, with a cigarette to mouth, doing his lungs no
good.
(Urging people past him in the queue, as he
had a cigarette to finish.)
Anyway, I took advantage of the special days
and the morning opening hours for those in need. I carried what I could and
took no bus home.
The exercise made up for the chocolate treat
I threw into the bag. Secure essential provisions. That is the law. And give
yourself something extra to look forward to. I learned that from arranging food
in advance of my respite breaks.
That
coffee and the bun/cake/biscuit/whatever. A trivial lifesaver of a treat. Well,
this roulette game in the supermarket couldn’t go on.
I felt government would hand out details to
match the vulnerable to the supermarkets. Yes, I ranted about that on this
blog. Why? I knew the process would be treacle-slow.
The process was cold-treacle-slow. Treeeeeeeeeacle-slow.
The alternative was there a bit earlier, in local government and volunteer
services – if I could nail a click-and-collect slot.
This is the low-rent version of supermarket
delivery. The shopping is waiting there for you. Breeze in, pick it up, and
breeze out. Home delivery slots were still illusory creatures. The
click-and-collect option wasn’t much better…
But it was better. I clutched that straw,
and used the volunteer service to do the legwork. Deliveries were restored. But
larger government, though its gears grind slowly, does eventually turn up.
Here we are, with a warning
letter listing my mother identified as one of those people in the high-risk
category. Stay the fuck indoors. Take advantage of volunteer services. Minimise
the risk.
I started taking prescriptions that way, too,
once all the usual pills were close to running out.
But now it is official, and we go through
the system to gain better services. To reach this point, I went through more
than a month of ducking and diving and dodging people.
I stare at the electronic bills that show
the days I went to town. With the supermarket offering three days a week for
the vulnerable, I used those three days.
Secure essentials on day one. Grab stuff for
myself on day two. Top up generally on day three. After one week of that, I’d
secured the main supplies.
In the second week, I continued purchasing
perishables. And I stocked up the freezer, to buy myself more time.
By the time week three came around, the
much-delayed supermarket delivery showed up. I didn’t have to head to town.
But that was it. All deliveries were
blocked. Booked too far ahead. The supermarket stopped showing more than a
week’s supply at a time.
I heard people were grabbing slots at
ungodly hours of the night. No good for me. I need the rest, to prepare for the
next day of caring.
The sense of oppression as
you near the supermarket is grim. You are aware of other shoppers in a way
that’s never been there before.
I knew my shopping time was coming to an
end. Local government gave me the volunteer helpline information, and I’d set
up the click and collect delivery. But I’d be short of milk over the weekend.
One last job.
I know. One more heist. Another attack run.
The last murder case before retirement. All the clichés were there. They
flashed before my eyes like the clichés they were.
One infected person. A single sneeze in the
aisles. On my last tour of the hot zone. Luckily, I made it through okay. Going
to town is now truly alien to me.
Yes, a carer arrives daily. But the carer is
wrapped up to lower the risk of transmission. The regulars fade. One regular
carer hasn’t been here in weeks.
The problem is the cold. If anyone in
caring/medicine catches cold, they are done. They don’t know if that’s the cold
or the other thing. No one takes chances, so every cold is treated as though it
is the other thing.
Yes, a carer arrives daily. So the danger
clock resets daily. But this daily event is manageable in a way that a
supermarket aisle is not manageable. Too much traffic through there…even
distanced, and even limited in numbers, and even with all the cleaning sprays
to hand.
I’m glad that’s over, for now.
What happens next? The
shielding letter took us into the system. A few days after that, the text
message landed. Here are the text codes you’ll need to arrange deliveries.
Alas, I’ve made my shopping order this week
for next week’s click and collect delivery, so I’ll still be using the
volunteers to fetch the shopping.
Next week, I’ll find out how good these
priority delivery slots are. I’m sure I’ll rearrange shopping routine all over
again.
It’s still shopping. And, mostly, the
delivery arrives. Right now, it’s brought by the volunteers. But I want to take
the pressure off them by taking delivery from the supermarket.
The supermarket is there to deliver food.
But the volunteers do all sorts of things, and I know their ad-libbed system is
creaking at the seams.
As usual, I also know that there are people
out there far worse off than we are. How have they fared, over the same
timeline?
From seeing ourselves frozen out of the
delivery system to our first new crack at priority deliveries, we’re talking 53
random days.
In
that time, instead of seven grocery deliveries, we’ve seen one official
delivery delayed by three weeks and two click and collect deliveries picked up
by volunteers. My donkey-work over 21 days kept things rolling along at the
risk of infection. A risk that I minimised. Doesn’t mean a damn thing if you
catch a sneeze across a near-empty supermarket aisle.
At this distance, I look back
on frosty mornings. I realise on the first haul that I’ve hit the limit of what
I can carry home. Smarter purchasing leads to being less of a donkey.
By the time I’m on my last run, I’m down to
20% donkey. No, I don’t want to rely on volunteers. Yes, that is what they are
there for. We’re officially locked down until mid-July.
I shouldn’t have to leave here before then.
Various organisations phone me, trying to keep me informed. Strangely, it works
the other way and I’m the one doing the explanations. We’ll call that
feedback-in-advance.
How far do I walk? As far as the gate, and
just beyond, at night, when I’m putting out the bin on a weekly basis.
I have no urge to go beyond that point. You
should resist any urge to go to the beach, run a marathon, or visit your second
home.
The Chief Medical Officer’s name should’ve
appeared at the top of the shielding letter. But she left the job in disgrace,
and her acting replacement stepped in to reinforce that disgrace by being
described on the shielding letter as INTERIM.
This whole year feels interim.
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