By Subject

Street Parties

Last Friday, 8^th May, many roads held street parties to commemorate the 75^th Anniversary of Victory in Europe, this to replace the many events which had been planned for the 8^th, 9^th and 10^th of May but which had of necessity been cancelled. St. Mary’s Road was one of these.

I drive a handybus for the volunteer centre in Newbury and was asked if I would use one of the buses to deliver foodbank parcels in Newbury.  So I took along Tony (another volunteer -the bus is big enough to allow distancing), first time was a trial of 12 deliveries the next was over 40. 

This took some time !  A minibus is not ideal for delivering lots of goods packed in shallow trays. The first corner made us aware that we hadn’t tied down the trays as well as we thought and we had to stop and put stuff back in the trays. 

Hi, it is May the 1st and the Lockdown is still with us. The roads are so quiet, the birdsong seemingly louder or at least it is clearer Swallows have been seen singing their hearts out and Cuckoo's heard, not seen. But where are the nightingales? Most years I am able to go and search for their call either early in the morning or late in the evening, but not this year. The location where they are to be found is no longer in Mortimer, it is in Pingewood on the North side of the M4 amongst the wasteland of bramble.

I am a parish councillor and a member of the Local History Group.  At the start of the lockdown I agreed to keep a diary from a parish councillor’s perspective.  I had not appreciated that it was meant to be put onto the MVP website in bite sized sections and so I append a summary of some observations which hopefully a few people will find of interest.  Any opinion stated is my own and not necessarily that of the council.

17th March 2020

Shopping

There are mostly only two kinds of shopping now – online shopping and food shopping. For most of us unable to get a supermarket delivery slot (and it is quite right that these are being reserved for those shielding) the occasional necessary outing to a supermarket or other food shop is our only excursion beyond our daily exercise walk. But what a different experience it is now!

First serious rain for 5 or 6 weeks and certainly since we’ve all been in lock down. So my diary entry today is.... well nothing really. A feature now of all of our lives is what I’d call a slow day.....I’m not going mad in the garden or out on my bike. I don’t need shopping, much less do I really want to go out in the rain.

As someone who likes to be busy it is hard to come to terms with the fact that it’s OK to get up late, it’s OK to sit and do nothing, it’s OK to turn the TV on a bit earlier than normal.

It’s OK to give yourself permission to have a “slow day”.

I'm a regular platelet donor. It's a form of giving blood but instead of the needle draining into a bag, they plug you into a machine where it sucks out a bit of blood, spins it round to separate the platelets and then pump back what's left . They repeat this many times until they've had most of your blood out for a spin. From me, they take a double donation each time I go and I'm plugged into the machine for just over an hour, with 20 mins either end of the procedure. To do this I go to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford.

So in March life changed suddenly and drastically. Overnight my job went from one of the most people- orientated, sociable and close contact jobs you can do, to a virtual one. I am an SEND teacher and I LOVE my job. I love working with my students and TAs and communicating verbally and non verbally. I love sitting next to or across from students 1:1 and using pictures and objects to explain concepts and facilitate social interaction and understanding. My students thrive when they have consistency, routine, strong relationships and engaging activities.

Today I looked at my Smart phone with excitement. Like most people I keep my diary appointments on my phone’s calendar rather than in a paper diary and notwithstanding these village diaries, which incidentally are probably better defined as “blogs”, I don’t keep a diary of what I’ve done in my day.

So over recent weeks it has been somewhat gloomy to see the empty calendar which only served to re-emphasise the fact that there are no drinks with friends planned, no cinema trips, no meals out with family.....empty.

I've run a digital business in the village for almost 25 years (in June). We've been through a lot of ups and downs in that time and this probably qualifies as a down. I'm sure that people in the future may ask why a business that specialises in helping other businesses transform their online processes might struggle in a period where online is the only saviour for many businesses? That's a good question and the answer has two parts: