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Dec. 2nd, 2023 03:07 pmthree-and-a-half years later, the blasted covid has finally got me
(no subject)
Mar. 24th, 2022 09:02 amTwo years after all staff were switched to homeworking thanks to covid, our building officially reopened this week, so I've been working on site every day as part of the building management team, being on hand to welcome everyone back, show them the new layout and re-arranged facilities and whatnot. Everything is different and yet everything is also exactly the same. Weird how that goes. We are going to be doing hybrid working from now on, a combination of working on site and at home, so everything is now designed to facilitate that.
This morning at 8.15am our data centre manager arrived declaring that we should all brace ourselves because he was feeling so peaceful and optimistic that something catastrophic was bound to happen
At 8.45am the fire alarm went off!
It was a false alarm, but I hold the DCM entirely responsible! He jinxed us!
Homeworking was so much more peaceful...
(Also, it turned out I am the only fire warden on site today, so that was fun)
This morning at 8.15am our data centre manager arrived declaring that we should all brace ourselves because he was feeling so peaceful and optimistic that something catastrophic was bound to happen
At 8.45am the fire alarm went off!
It was a false alarm, but I hold the DCM entirely responsible! He jinxed us!
Homeworking was so much more peaceful...
(Also, it turned out I am the only fire warden on site today, so that was fun)
(no subject)
Jan. 25th, 2022 09:11 am...aaaand the littlest niece, down in Cornwall, now has covid too! It's her birthday tomorrow, as well, she's turning 5. They'll have to cancel her party, and it's the first they've been able to plan for her since she was adopted!
(no subject)
Jan. 24th, 2022 09:07 amMy brother is now covid positive - he has severe asthma and is prone to bad chest infections, so now we just have to hope his triple vaccinations protect him enough.
Mum is now the only person in their household who hasn't yet caught the damn thing.
Dad is still positive a week later, and they are entering their third week of having quarantining people in the house.
And yet Westminster wants everyone to believe the plague is over :(
Mum is now the only person in their household who hasn't yet caught the damn thing.
Dad is still positive a week later, and they are entering their third week of having quarantining people in the house.
And yet Westminster wants everyone to believe the plague is over :(
(no subject)
Dec. 2nd, 2021 06:21 pmToday I attended my first in-person funeral in over two years. I've done a whole bunch of streamed funerals in that time, including for my own cousin, which I desperately wanted to attend but couldn't, so it felt like quite a big deal to be able to attend in person today.
Today's funeral was for the husband of my dad's cousin, which doesn't sound like a particularly close relationship, I know, especially considering that my dad has (or had, they aren't all alive still) something like 56 first cousins, all told. But this particular cousin is one we've always been very close to, as a family - she and her husband have been more like an uncle and aunt to me than anything else. So I was invited to attend, and considered it my honour. I was very, very fond of Peter. His death last month was expected, he was 84, had heart trouble for years, and had been failing for several months, but it was and is deeply sad.
It was a lovely service. Peter would have hated it, because it was all about him. He was the quietest, most deeply reserved man imaginable, hated being the centre of attention. At any event, he was always in the background, trying to avoid being noticed. It's hard to find a photograph in which he isn't wearing a pained 'oh no' expression. Give him a hug and kiss and he'd get all embarrassed. But the service today was just so full of love, so many people standing up in tears to talk about how this gentle, reserved little man who always liked to hide in the background had very quietly made such an enormous difference in their lives, just by being kind and thoughtful and generous, by noticing them when they were struggling and reaching out to offer words of support and encouragement, by never hesitating to help out when help was called for, by always being there for anyone in need.
Rest in peace, Peter. You were very loved.
Today's funeral was for the husband of my dad's cousin, which doesn't sound like a particularly close relationship, I know, especially considering that my dad has (or had, they aren't all alive still) something like 56 first cousins, all told. But this particular cousin is one we've always been very close to, as a family - she and her husband have been more like an uncle and aunt to me than anything else. So I was invited to attend, and considered it my honour. I was very, very fond of Peter. His death last month was expected, he was 84, had heart trouble for years, and had been failing for several months, but it was and is deeply sad.
It was a lovely service. Peter would have hated it, because it was all about him. He was the quietest, most deeply reserved man imaginable, hated being the centre of attention. At any event, he was always in the background, trying to avoid being noticed. It's hard to find a photograph in which he isn't wearing a pained 'oh no' expression. Give him a hug and kiss and he'd get all embarrassed. But the service today was just so full of love, so many people standing up in tears to talk about how this gentle, reserved little man who always liked to hide in the background had very quietly made such an enormous difference in their lives, just by being kind and thoughtful and generous, by noticing them when they were struggling and reaching out to offer words of support and encouragement, by never hesitating to help out when help was called for, by always being there for anyone in need.
Rest in peace, Peter. You were very loved.
(no subject)
Oct. 17th, 2021 05:25 pmSo this weekend brought with it the news that my Nan, who will be 90 next month, has caught covid.
She's barely left the house in two years. She's been to the doctor a handful of times, and came to family gatherings in the park exactly twice,to meet my sister's kids, and that's it. She doesn't leave the house, she barely even sees anyone, the family have reduced physical contact to a bare minimum. But she can't be completely isolated, not without going stir crazy, and she has to have her weekly shopping, so...
My Uncle Marcus and Aunty Linda have been doing the shopping for Nan, every week without fail. Linda recently went on a coach holiday with her sister. They both had to have negative covid tests before they could board the coach, so they figured it was safe. They had their trip to Blackpool, came home, and then Linda went with Marcus to deliver Nan's shopping, as usual. Twenty-four hours later she was pinged by Track-and-Trace because someone else from the coach party had tested positive. So Linda was tested - positive. Another uncle, Robert, was taking Nan for her covid booster jab on Friday, but because of the contact she couldn't have the jab, had to go for a covid test instead. And tested positive.
Her main symptom at the moment is a chesty cough. She's double jabbed. But she is almost 90. We just have to hope and pray that she is protected enough and will get off with a light case - and Linda, too.
She's barely left the house in two years. She's been to the doctor a handful of times, and came to family gatherings in the park exactly twice,to meet my sister's kids, and that's it. She doesn't leave the house, she barely even sees anyone, the family have reduced physical contact to a bare minimum. But she can't be completely isolated, not without going stir crazy, and she has to have her weekly shopping, so...
My Uncle Marcus and Aunty Linda have been doing the shopping for Nan, every week without fail. Linda recently went on a coach holiday with her sister. They both had to have negative covid tests before they could board the coach, so they figured it was safe. They had their trip to Blackpool, came home, and then Linda went with Marcus to deliver Nan's shopping, as usual. Twenty-four hours later she was pinged by Track-and-Trace because someone else from the coach party had tested positive. So Linda was tested - positive. Another uncle, Robert, was taking Nan for her covid booster jab on Friday, but because of the contact she couldn't have the jab, had to go for a covid test instead. And tested positive.
Her main symptom at the moment is a chesty cough. She's double jabbed. But she is almost 90. We just have to hope and pray that she is protected enough and will get off with a light case - and Linda, too.
(no subject)
Dec. 21st, 2020 10:58 amToday, the 5yo should have been seeing Santa.
The event was organised by a local community group, based out of an old stately home near where I live. The initial plan was a masked-and-distanced in-person meeting in the very beautiful reading room at the house, but then with covid cases locally beginning to spiral, that plan shifted into a personalised video call with each child who’d booked.
Then on Saturday evening this latest lockdown was announced with almost immediate effect, only a few hours warning. And a little later we received an email from the very upset organisers to say that they were going to have to cancel the event and issue a refund, because the Santa Suit and video equipment are all locked away in the house (community centre), which because of lockdown they are no longer permitted to enter. There wasn’t time on Saturday night to retrieve it. So all those kids won’t be getting their call from Santa today after all.
Such a shame. Luckily we did get to wave to him on Saturday, as a different version of him did a masked-and-safely-distanced walk around the neighbourhood, accompanied by an elf I went to school with!
Also today, my brother rebelled against his work.
He works in a telephone support centre, taking calls from people having technical issues. They switched to homeworking back in March and that worked fine for months.
Now, this job has never been ideal. It is in another town and Bro doesn’t drive, so he has always had a really long commute on public transport, working unsocial and constantly changing shift patterns, so the move to homeworking was a blessing for him. He could work his shift without a 90-120 minute commute at either end, without having to worry about missing the last bus, without having to leave the house at 5am to get to work for 7.30.
At the start of December, with covid cases locally already beginning to spiral out of control again, the company abruptly decided to recall all service desk staff to on-site working, claiming they weren’t answering enough calls. The entire management, however, continued to work from home. This has been a nightmare for Bro, who has asthma and generall fragile health, once again condemned to hours on increasingly flaky public transport every day (a lot of services are no longer running, so getting to and from work is extremely difficult), as well as hours spent in a poorly ventilated building with a whole bunch of other people, in a town with soaring virus figures. Government advice still says that anyone who can work from home should continue to do so, but the company got around that one by claiming call centre staff as key workers.
Now this week, we are back in full lockdown with a new and even more highly transmissible form of the virus circulating generally. The company is still insisting that all service desk staff must continue to work from site, while their managers remain safe at home. The service desk staff have all been complaining, lodging health and safety appeals, to no avail.
So today my brother rebelled. He decided not to risk his health on public transport. Instead as his shift began he logged on at home to carry out his shift in safety. How the company will react remains to be seen. But they were endangering his life. He doesn’t need to be on site to do his job. If they try to sack him, he has a strong case to take to tribunal. And I will be behind him all the way!
(ETA: Apparently the entire team independently made the same decision this morning! Only one person went in, and that was just to collect a headset. Mass action for the win! The company will have a hard job sacking all of them!)
The event was organised by a local community group, based out of an old stately home near where I live. The initial plan was a masked-and-distanced in-person meeting in the very beautiful reading room at the house, but then with covid cases locally beginning to spiral, that plan shifted into a personalised video call with each child who’d booked.
Then on Saturday evening this latest lockdown was announced with almost immediate effect, only a few hours warning. And a little later we received an email from the very upset organisers to say that they were going to have to cancel the event and issue a refund, because the Santa Suit and video equipment are all locked away in the house (community centre), which because of lockdown they are no longer permitted to enter. There wasn’t time on Saturday night to retrieve it. So all those kids won’t be getting their call from Santa today after all.
Such a shame. Luckily we did get to wave to him on Saturday, as a different version of him did a masked-and-safely-distanced walk around the neighbourhood, accompanied by an elf I went to school with!
Also today, my brother rebelled against his work.
He works in a telephone support centre, taking calls from people having technical issues. They switched to homeworking back in March and that worked fine for months.
Now, this job has never been ideal. It is in another town and Bro doesn’t drive, so he has always had a really long commute on public transport, working unsocial and constantly changing shift patterns, so the move to homeworking was a blessing for him. He could work his shift without a 90-120 minute commute at either end, without having to worry about missing the last bus, without having to leave the house at 5am to get to work for 7.30.
At the start of December, with covid cases locally already beginning to spiral out of control again, the company abruptly decided to recall all service desk staff to on-site working, claiming they weren’t answering enough calls. The entire management, however, continued to work from home. This has been a nightmare for Bro, who has asthma and generall fragile health, once again condemned to hours on increasingly flaky public transport every day (a lot of services are no longer running, so getting to and from work is extremely difficult), as well as hours spent in a poorly ventilated building with a whole bunch of other people, in a town with soaring virus figures. Government advice still says that anyone who can work from home should continue to do so, but the company got around that one by claiming call centre staff as key workers.
Now this week, we are back in full lockdown with a new and even more highly transmissible form of the virus circulating generally. The company is still insisting that all service desk staff must continue to work from site, while their managers remain safe at home. The service desk staff have all been complaining, lodging health and safety appeals, to no avail.
So today my brother rebelled. He decided not to risk his health on public transport. Instead as his shift began he logged on at home to carry out his shift in safety. How the company will react remains to be seen. But they were endangering his life. He doesn’t need to be on site to do his job. If they try to sack him, he has a strong case to take to tribunal. And I will be behind him all the way!
(ETA: Apparently the entire team independently made the same decision this morning! Only one person went in, and that was just to collect a headset. Mass action for the win! The company will have a hard job sacking all of them!)
They think it's all over – it is now!
Aug. 21st, 2020 03:22 pmAfter almost three years slogging through a system that at times has seemed almost designed to thwart them at every turn, my sister and brother-in-law finally made it to their final adoption hearing this morning, which lasted all of ten minutes. It was a formality. The birth family offered no objection – in fact, the birth father submitted a letter of blessing so gracious the judge almost cried! The forms were stamped and signed, the adoption order was ratified, and I am an auntie again.
More importantly, after 1205 and 864 days in care of the local authority respectively, the children are finally part of a family and free of The System.
So, 324 days after moving in, welcome to the family, Miss E and Little G!
I got to see them all for a few days at the end of July – I'd booked a week off work and my brother had booked the same week off work, so D&R booked an Airbnb nearby and trundled the children down for a few days of picnics in the sun. Luckily, it was a bright sunny week, as it turned out. We even managed an extended family get-together, with lots of socially distanced picnic rugs, so that the wider family got to meet the children at last.
In Other Good News, I had two cousins get married in the same week at the end of July. Yes, after all the stress and heartache, my cousin Gareth and his partner Nina finally made it to the registry office, although not without further hiccups along the way, as having set their rescheduled date, Gareth then fell ill with a nasty infection and ended up in hospital – he was discharged on the Friday and married on the Saturday. It was a very quiet affair, with only parents, locally-based siblings and the children in attendance – and right up till the last minute they weren't even planning to get dressed up for it, they were so disheartened by their situation. But my Big Sis sent them a bouquet of flowers from her garden and that inspired them to make the effort after all, and I'm so happy they did – Nina and the children are going to need those special memories to look back on. Gareth's brother Stephen has been over from Japan this week for a final visit with his brother and seeing pictures of them together reduced me to tears. Gareth doesn't have much time left. He's already lasted longer than expected – and honestly, I think it was sheer determination that brought him this far, he was determined to hang on until they could get married, determined to hang on to as much time with his kids as he can possibly get. But I don't know how much longer he can last now. I don't think anyone knows. He is having chemo to try to buy a little more time, but there's no way of predicting – could be months, could be weeks, could be days.
The other cousinly wedding was my little cousin Vee, who is a junior doctor in London and had been planning an overseas wedding in Italy for the summer, but in the end scaled her plans down to a registry officer with just her sister-in-law and a single friend as witness, because the extended family is too big to have everyone there and they didn't want to have to choose, plus her mum was (and still is) in hospital, so if one couldn't have parents there they decided that neither would! So in the end they had the most minimalist wedding imaginable and then instead of a reception went hiking up in the mountains for the afternoon, with Vee still in her wedding dress!
In Other, Other News, I have now had it in writing that my role has been identified as continued Homeworking for the 2020/2021 academic year, with no anticipated work on campus, this arrangement to be reviewed at Easter 2021. I already knew this would be the case, of course, but it's official now. I've been able to attend campus for a pre-booked half-hour slot to collect my chair, monitor and some other bits and pieces, and that's it – my home office is all set up, working from home is now my new normal for the foreseeable future. It still feels really weird. I really like the flexibility. I like not having to commute. I like having tea breaks in the garden. But it still feels really disconnected – I've gone from spending every day in a building with 250 other people to spending every day alone in my little flat and I really miss feeling connected to the rest of the department and chatting to people casually in passing and being in touch with what's going on in other teams and in other peoples' lives, and actually being able to see my work friends outside of the computer screen. I randomly bumped into a colleague while out for a walk the other day and it was disproportionately exciting to actually see someone in the flesh who isn't part of my regular circle!
But I know I am really lucky, and I do feel very safe and well protected, living in my enclosed little bubble.
I suppose we will all get used to the new normal in the end.
More importantly, after 1205 and 864 days in care of the local authority respectively, the children are finally part of a family and free of The System.
So, 324 days after moving in, welcome to the family, Miss E and Little G!
I got to see them all for a few days at the end of July – I'd booked a week off work and my brother had booked the same week off work, so D&R booked an Airbnb nearby and trundled the children down for a few days of picnics in the sun. Luckily, it was a bright sunny week, as it turned out. We even managed an extended family get-together, with lots of socially distanced picnic rugs, so that the wider family got to meet the children at last.
In Other Good News, I had two cousins get married in the same week at the end of July. Yes, after all the stress and heartache, my cousin Gareth and his partner Nina finally made it to the registry office, although not without further hiccups along the way, as having set their rescheduled date, Gareth then fell ill with a nasty infection and ended up in hospital – he was discharged on the Friday and married on the Saturday. It was a very quiet affair, with only parents, locally-based siblings and the children in attendance – and right up till the last minute they weren't even planning to get dressed up for it, they were so disheartened by their situation. But my Big Sis sent them a bouquet of flowers from her garden and that inspired them to make the effort after all, and I'm so happy they did – Nina and the children are going to need those special memories to look back on. Gareth's brother Stephen has been over from Japan this week for a final visit with his brother and seeing pictures of them together reduced me to tears. Gareth doesn't have much time left. He's already lasted longer than expected – and honestly, I think it was sheer determination that brought him this far, he was determined to hang on until they could get married, determined to hang on to as much time with his kids as he can possibly get. But I don't know how much longer he can last now. I don't think anyone knows. He is having chemo to try to buy a little more time, but there's no way of predicting – could be months, could be weeks, could be days.
The other cousinly wedding was my little cousin Vee, who is a junior doctor in London and had been planning an overseas wedding in Italy for the summer, but in the end scaled her plans down to a registry officer with just her sister-in-law and a single friend as witness, because the extended family is too big to have everyone there and they didn't want to have to choose, plus her mum was (and still is) in hospital, so if one couldn't have parents there they decided that neither would! So in the end they had the most minimalist wedding imaginable and then instead of a reception went hiking up in the mountains for the afternoon, with Vee still in her wedding dress!
In Other, Other News, I have now had it in writing that my role has been identified as continued Homeworking for the 2020/2021 academic year, with no anticipated work on campus, this arrangement to be reviewed at Easter 2021. I already knew this would be the case, of course, but it's official now. I've been able to attend campus for a pre-booked half-hour slot to collect my chair, monitor and some other bits and pieces, and that's it – my home office is all set up, working from home is now my new normal for the foreseeable future. It still feels really weird. I really like the flexibility. I like not having to commute. I like having tea breaks in the garden. But it still feels really disconnected – I've gone from spending every day in a building with 250 other people to spending every day alone in my little flat and I really miss feeling connected to the rest of the department and chatting to people casually in passing and being in touch with what's going on in other teams and in other peoples' lives, and actually being able to see my work friends outside of the computer screen. I randomly bumped into a colleague while out for a walk the other day and it was disproportionately exciting to actually see someone in the flesh who isn't part of my regular circle!
But I know I am really lucky, and I do feel very safe and well protected, living in my enclosed little bubble.
I suppose we will all get used to the new normal in the end.
