24 March – Day after PM speech / homeworking day 1
Today has been tough.
Last nights speech was like a gut punch that you knew was coming and wanted to come, but it still hurts like hell. Watching it brought on a small panic attack. I live away from my family who I will no longer be able to visit for Easter, and I called my mother to cry to her after the speech. She’s in the high risk group, but she can’t afford to take time off work to isolate. She works in a factory and the HR and owner there are not very helpful when it come to absences and sickness. They’ve declared that no one in the factory is considered to be high risk so no one should be off work. I’ve been trying to figure out if I could afford to help keep my Mam in her rented house if things go wrong, by sharing my pay with her.
Despite being 25 and pretty independent, this whole situation has left me feeling lost at sea.
I didn’t sleep much last night. I probably look as exhausted as the PM did in the speech honestly. It’s still all very surreal. And confusing. I have almost no food here and now I’m too scared to go out – how do I prove it’s essential? Do I need photos of my empty cupboards?
Today was also the first time I’ve ever really done remote working. The laptop I was issued worked pretty well. It was good to talk to some of the people I work with – even though we’re all at home it made me feel a little less alone. Not everyone got issued a laptop before the stay at home orders, so there were only a few of us working. There are a few issues – there are limitations on the work we can do for security reasons, and we often have to order physical files from storage for further investigation. I don’t feel like I got very much done.
I feel like I’m in a bad dream, a history book, or some apocalyptic film. I just want it to be over. Until it is I think I’m going to stop looking at Twitter. I don’t think I’ll I’ll watching the daily briefings either – I’ll check up on what is said later. Watching them everyday is very demoralising and frankly exhausting.
Dr Kristopher Lovell 