31956: A week in my life during lockdown
Creators: name: Project, Lockdown2020 and Beyond
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2023
Subjects: classificationCode: 479999
subject: Other language, communication and culture not elsewhere classified

description: During lockdown my working day starts earlier as I do not have a commute to face. In return, I allow myself a full hour at lunchtime, rather than the 30 minutes I allow myself in the office. It means that some lunchtimes are shared with my wife and daughter, both also working from home during the lockdown. On Monday, after work, I head off to Tesco in Abingdon for the weekly shop. I have to allow longer for a shop which used to take one hour door to door. Having picked up my trolley which still requires a coin to release it from the trolley park, I carefully wipe down the handle with a disinfectant wipe. I join the end of the free flowing queue to enter the store. I pick up a scan as you shop PDA and disinfect that as well. The shop has a one way system that 90% of people are following. Social distancing is mostly working well. I do fruit and veg and am frustrated that they have moved the select your own apples away from the scales, so I pick up a pre-packed bag of apples instead of using my cloth bags. When I pick up carrots and parsnips I have to do a do-si-do with another shopper to get to the scales to weigh them and then scan the label, which I stick to the rear of my shopping list rather than to my cloth bag. I then transfer to the other side of the store, having bypassed refrigerables. I go up an aisle I don't need to be able to pick up the one way system again, but am pleased to be able to get the passata and tomato puree which have been in short supply for many weeks. Home baking aisle is still out of the items on my list. As I return up the other side of the store I bypass frozen, return to refrigerables and then pick up my frozen food last. I wonder why supermarkets don't lay out their stores in a more logical way. On Tuesday I work a more flexible day and take time out in the morning to join the staff meeting from my local church (where I am an honorary member of the staff team). Normally, I would not be able to attend the weekly staff meetings in Abingdon as they are too far from my office in Oxford. With lockdown, I am able to join the Google Meets meeting for a short while as we look at John's Gospel chapter 5 and reflect on what this passage says about focus and change. We discuss the focus of the church at this time, when the building is closed but the church is very active on YouTube and Google Meets. Some people have not coped well with the change, any more than the man healed in this passage, who does not seem to adjust to his 'new normal' very well. The rest of my Tuesday is filled with 4 Microsoft Teams meetings at work and a WebEx call with one of our suppliers. Later in the evening, I speak via Teams with the suppliers' developers in the States. That call would not have happened any differently without lockdown, but it was interesting to reflect on how losing an hour in the evening was less of an impact because I had been able to take an hour out in the morning. There is the quick catch up meeting with my own team on Wednesday morning - a feature of lockdown which has become a daily event - just to touch base with no set agenda. Apart from that, Wednesday is free from meetings and I am able to check the metrics for some of our services. I add to the incidents by raising one to UPST to ask whether there is an issue with our web server. Then some reading, including the latest Government advice. After work I attend a Mathematics Institute public lecture on "Smartphones vs Covid-19" by Renaud Lambiotte. Technology has an important role to play during this lockdown, but not at any cost. Later on Wednesday evening my wife and I join our church home group via Google Meets to study 1 Peter 2 and discuss what identity means to us in these difficult times. We notice that Google Meets has been expanded and we can see all 5 other homes on our screen at the same time. Audio is a challenge and people spend most of the session muting and un-muting themselves so that the echo is not too severe. The main meeting on Thursday is the departmental Business Continuity Planning (BCP) team meeting. BCP has been extremely successful in moving us to working from home, but it is apparent that the challenge of returning to on-site working will be just as hard. On Thursday evening, I head off to Sainsbury's Heyford Hill. When we are not in lockdown, we supplement the weekly shop with extra items from the village stores. In lockdown we are drinking a lot more (of our own) milk than normal (in tea and coffee) and Tesco's only allows us to buy 3 bottles of milk per shop. Normally, the village stores provides the top-up, but they didn't have any home baking either, so I decide to venture further afield. As I approach the store I am surprised that the price of petrol has fallen to £100.9. I struggle to remember when it was that low previously. Sainsbury's doesn't have a queue outside. Nor does it have a one way system within the store - so social distancing isn't working. Shoppers are going in both directions and passing each other fairly closely within the confined aisles. However, I do manage to buy bread flour, yeast and bicarbonate of soda, in addition to the milk and a few other minor items. Self checkout works well (I have never managed to work out how I register for their scan as you shop service). I had a box of 50 DIY face masks on my shelf at the start of lockdown and I have used two face masks this week. At some point I will have to investigate washable ones. Friday starts off with men's prayer breakfast. Normally we would head around to someone's home and share bacon baps or croissants. It is not the same on Google Meets, but the sharing of our circumstances and the ability to pray for each other and for our families is just as valued. During the day I commit the Windows updates for May. I keep an eye on our web site. I start planning a report about ITIL 4 and how I have made use of the information I gathered at an international conference in February - when international travel was still possible and the threat of lockdown seemed a far off threat. Saturday sees me digging out the rotten end of a fence post. In the evening my wife and I participate in an on-line quiz supporting a charity. Some of the elderly struggled to join the quiz initially, but everyone did eventually and it started more or less on time. The breakout rooms during the interval work quite well. We think we probably spoke to as many people as if we had been at the quiz in person. On Sunday I configure the YouTube channel home page for our church to show the latest playlists and check that everything is ready to go. I then connect to the pre-service Google Meet prayer meeting. I join my wife and daughter in the lounge where we all watch the YouTube service together and I skip the adverts in the songs using a remote mouse. After church, I move the laptop into the dining room so that my wife can watch the BBC service in the lounge. I connect to our home group Google Meet where we discuss the contents of the service and answer questions which have been sent to the church WhatsApp group. Sunday afternoon I record two videos and edit them, ready for use next Sunday (part of a puppet item) and the following Sunday (a poem for Pentecost).