The Coronavirus Post

Hi there,

It’s been a while.

Today is the fourth of April 2020 and I continue to work at the same company but am now a permanent employee. I was taken on last June after several years working for them via a driver’s agency so in total I have been here for three years and three months.

So, here’s a brief recap of who I am.

I used to blog as the London Cabby up until 2015 and posts should still be available for you to read at http://www.londoncabby.blogspot.com 

I met someone and got married and moved out to Suffolk. I tried to drive into London to work every day but found it tough so decided to try and find a job locally. I signed up with various driving agencies and secured work driving 7.5-ton trucks as far as Scotland delivering anything and everything. After several mishaps (some of which I’ve documented in previous posts here), I decided that van driving suited me better and after receiving an assignment for my present company I managed to make a good impression and here I’ve remained eventually being offered a permanent job.

 We deliver Cleaning, Hygiene, Medical and assorted other products pretty much all over the country but our small team of drivers tend to stick to Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex with the odd journey to the East side of London. The long-distance stuff gets sent out via carriers such as DPD and Royal Mail.

They used to rotate us whereby one day we’d be in Norfolk and Suffolk then the next we’d be off to Essex and London but for the last year and a bit it seems to be me doing Essex and London every day but I’ve now got used to it and am pretty familiar with all the customers which include Schools and Universities, hospitals, care homes, dentists, vets, large factories and smaller independent companies, pretty much anyone who needs our products, even private homes.

Since this Coronavirus Pandemic has been affecting the world, we have seen demand for our products soar. Gloves, masks and all other types of PPE (personal protection equipment) have been flying off the shelves. So much so that the re-supply cannot keep up with demand which in turn means our stocks are running dangerously low. The NHS obviously has priority for all PPE but places like care homes aren’t being afforded similar status so they are suffering shortages of all the same items required by the NHS to go about their daily jobs as safely as it is their right to do.

 I was at a care home in Braintree last week where they normally order 6x40 packs of toilet rolls, 10 x boxes of gloves and lots of different cleaning products on a weekly basis and I was only able to deliver a third of their requirement as we either didn’t have the stock or we were rationing stuff after being told that the NHS had priority. I don’t think that’s fair. 

It seems everyone’s been caught out and now were all scrambling about trying to keep ourselves stocked up.

This also applies to home life where just simply popping into Tesco isn’t an option at the moment. People are having to queue up for some time, keep a safe distance from other customers and then walk around shopping for everyday items which are no longer there such as toilet paper, pasta, eggs and even bread. To be fair that was the case a few weeks ago but I think all the major supermarkets have got their act together and some sort of order has now been restored.

As a priority worker I have managed to keep working whilst other people have been laid off or furloughed (my son included) with 80% pay, which I wouldn’t mind myself to be honest. Being diabetic I don’t think my body would take well to contracting Covid 19 and however many precautions we take it can still find its way into our bodies, so a few weeks of isolation would probably be beneficial to me. There have been some terrible news reports of recent deaths to the virus. People with no underlying health conditions have become victims to it, the youngest a 13-year-old boy, absolutely shocking.

All we can do is follow government advice and stay indoors and hopefully we’ll turn a corner and get back to our normal lives sooner rather than later.

So, on that note I’ll end this post and try and do another one soon.

Stay Safe.

TM