January 2021 - A bleak outlook

 Well first of all, happy new year! Here's to hoping 2021 will be a better year than 2020. I dare not even joke and ask if it could get any worse?

Covid wise, things were becoming worse and worse. While the vaccine deployment was gaining speed, the cases, admissions to hospitals and deaths continued to rise faster. The nation entered a third lockdown on the 5th of January, and it seemed like it was too late. They should have done it earlier, and it seemed the mixing that a lot of people did over Christmas was coming back to haunt us as a whole.  

January saw the nation exceed 100,000 covid deaths. A number so large, I couldn't take it in. The 20th of January saw a grim record of 1,820 deaths in the UK, as well as 4,000 people on ventilators, more than in the first lockdown. If ever there was a tipping point into the abyss, it seemed like we were teetering on it. I suppose on a better note, 8.9 million vaccinations had so far been given out. I suppose you could call that a silver lining. We just had to hope we would start to see the effects of the vaccine rollout soon.

Things at work were getting worse. The Christmas recovery in terms of stock was a nightmare. It took several days into the new year to get our shelves full again. There were whole shelves devoid of stock, as people seemed to be panic buying again. And I'm not going to lie, I was one of them. I had reached a point where I felt like I needed to prepare for whatever apocalyptic scenario came next. And while I didn't go around filling my trolley and taking everything, I made sure that we had a 6 week supply of canned and dried food stored in a cupboard in case things fell apart. I figured 6 weeks for the 3 of us would get us through to spring, where then things would start improving with the warmer weather like it did in 2020, and plus then we could start to supplant it with what we would grow in the garden. 

I know how utterly ridiculous that sounded, but that was what was going through my head at that time. And as much as James tried to calm me. It was not having any effect.

The general public weren't helping either, abuse from customers seemed to be getting worse, as they complained about the lack of stock, having to wear masks, that they were unhappy with everything. The shouting and screaming got worse, and one customer even pushed me and threatened to come back later and fight me when I refused him entry to the store because we had become too crowded, and it was no longer safe for everyone.

But there we go, key worker right? Load of rubbish. I think people used the pandemic to make out that we were worth looking after. People that kept the shelves full so people could still do their food shopping while thousands were dying. But it's all rubbish. At the end of the day, we are the lowest, and nothing was going to change that. Not even the fake gratitude that people gave us. "Thank you for coming to work" was one of them. What a patronising thing to say to someone working during a pandemic with people. It's all right for a lot of people, working from home or having been furloughed. I was working more hours than I had ever worked, and despite being a Team Support Manager, I spent most of my time filling shelves and operating a till, because so many of our team were off with covid or isolating. There were times it seemed like we might have to close we were so short of staff, and the ones that were left where knackered.

I'm going to stop ranting now. And I don't even have any nice pictures for you from January, because I didn't do anything. Not that you could because of the lockdown, but I didn't even go for a walk on my days off, I didn't play board games, or cook anything nice, or even craft anything. I just spent my spare time glued to the news and laid in bed, trying to ignore what was going on around me.

Even my fun make your own treats that arrived from Japan didn't improve my mood. They got shoved in the cupboard next to the 6 weeks of pandemic food and got forgotten about.

Hopefully February gets better.