Normally I work three days a week for my electrical wholesale family business. I’m involved with a few local disability charities and I've recently been appointed vice chair of the Physical Disabilities Forum in Kent.
Weekends I try to cram in as many activities as possible with my young son Thomas (6) and often take him on trips up to London, swimming at a private accessible pool or generally zooming around the streets of Canterbury for hours on end with him on my lap - two lads cruising around causing mischief.
It’s funny how many times I’ve been heard saying that I’ve taken on too many things and could really do with time standing still for a few months so that I can catch up.
Well here we are with just that. The business has gone into partial shut-down with most of its staff staying at home under the governments 80% of wages (Job retention) scheme. Other than a few conference calls, life has come to resounding stand-still.
My volunteer carer (from an organisation called Volunteer Matters) has been recalled from her ‘Gap year’ and gone back to Germany. My work carer / PA provided by Access to Work, is also mostly at home under the governments 80% of wages scheme.
My wife Joanne is doing a wonderful job of taking lead on the home school activities with Thomas in between working from home (as a disability assessor) - so I thought I’d share with you a few of the activities that Thomas and myself have been getting up to.
Week One of Social Distancing
This was quite fun, Tom had been off school with a chest infection and been told to stay home all week. I’d been fortunate enough to get to a food wholesaler before the shops went mad and stocked up on some tinned food. By Wednesday of the first week we found the tinned food was giving us serious wind and the face-masks were particularly handy for use around the house!
We still went out and found taking to the streets (saying well clear of anyone else) quite liberating, people would see us and smile and wave. We felt guilty at our hoard of tinned food so took some out with us and left them on the door steps of friends and family around the city. The weather was lovely so we enjoyed picnics in the garden and it all felt quite surreal and peaceful (we are on a flight path and the sky is often full of planes busying themselves back and forth.)
For the few weeks leading up to this point I’d been going swimming in an accessible private pool as much as possible. I had read that exercise can help build up the immune system.
I was thinking well if we can’t go out for 12 weeks as long as I can come for a swim every few days and when we get bored go zooming around town with the little one.
Bit by bit things started to get more serious. My brother and his partner went down with symptoms of the dreaded lurgy and between them they didn’t own a thermometer, having a youngster in the house we have plenty so Tom and myself popped round to their block of flats to drop off some tinned fruit, sweets and thermometer (to be safe we dropped the bounty off in the lift and my brother called it from the top) so we didn’t come into contact with him.
Week Two – Lock down
Things were to change quite dramatically on the evening of the 23 March when I realised that I probably won’t be leaving the house for a while. Taking Tom out for a zoom around town isn’t exactly exercise and I’m sure driving 30 minutes into the countryside would be frowned upon. We have plenty of food and for any extra bits my wife can pop out a few times a week. I’ve taken Tom out the front of the house a few times and spoken to neighbours at a sensible distance but not left the road.
Other things we tried was helping out mummy with some cleaning as we would have far less input from carers over this period and given that she does all the laundry and cooking we need to be able to contribute towards the household.
After spending what seemed like hours cleaning our bathroom (a proper spring clean, throwing out loads of bottles that seem to end up being hoarded away), I promised him a 'Diet Coke' break. During the cleaning I would sing him the [advert] song (which wasn’t pretty), asked Alexa to play it and he loved the saxophone during the chorus. I showed him the 90's advert on YouTube and said during our ‘Diet Coke’ break we’d have to take our shirts off for the neighbours. Turns out it was too windy and we just ended up burping like toads and laughing at each other.
I know I’m in a really lucky position during this lockdown, locked up in a nice house with an awesome little dude. Having my wife working at home is great and the three of us so far haven’t fallen out too much.
The gravity of the wider situation is really scary, what if one of us gets sick? With one carer gone and the other only coming in for an hour or so in the morning and my brother being sick our support structure has dwindled very quickly.
Watching the news and seeing the situation get worse for so many people, it’s easy to become withdrawn and go down into a spiral of anxiety and depression.
My advice is simple, make things fun, set a plan out for each day and make sure you get dressed (it would be too easy to spend weeks in your PJ’s) at a reasonable hour and pace yourself.
Stay home and stay safe everyone.