Vicky Walker spoke with volunteer Laura at the Downham Vaccination Hub in June.
TRANSCRIPT:
VW: Hi, this is Vicky Walker for Lewisham Vaccination Stories. It is Saturday 19 June and I’m here at the Downham Vaccination Hub with…
LN: Laura.
VW: Laura is a fellow volunteer here at the vaccination hub, and she has been my admin this morning and has been volunteering here for a while. Why don’t you tell me what it has been like being a volunteer?
LN: It has been really enjoyable. I think the best thing about this has been a reminder of what it was like when I was a Virgin Atlantic air hostess, and I never knew who I was going to work with until I turned up, and sometimes it was amazing and sometimes it was hell. But this experience has just always been so much fun, and I just love talking to people and getting to know new people.
VW: Does it feel like the same thing, like you are on a plane but it is a very short flight?
LN: Yes. In fact, earlier, I called people “passengers” rather than patients, which was a bit of a booboo.
But yes, I think when you haven’t been mixing with lots of people, coming out and volunteering is one of the best things that you can do, because it makes you feel like a human again, because that is what we are meant to do, isn’t it? We are meant to be social.
VW: We are.
LN: We are social creatures.
VW: Yes. How did you find out about volunteering?
LN: I go to Base 13 in Lee and many of the members there are volunteers, and one of the volunteers actually said, “You’d be really good at this.” I thought, “Okay, well, I’ll give it a go,” and mainly it was that meet-and-greet thing with older people, which I really love, but it has got a lot more diverse as time has gone and the age has gone down, but it is still really enjoyable. Now I’m doing admin, people are trying to convince me to be a vaccinator; I may or may not do that, but yes.
VW: How was it when you got your own vaccination? Where did you go?
LN: I’m a naughty person. I know a vaccinator who told me to come down and get it. (Laughter) But as I am a keyworker in my 9-to-5, I didn’t feel too guilty about that. He gave me that first jab, and then about 6 weeks later my doctor’s surgery phoned up and I got my second.
I was probably earlier than most at my age but yes, it is a really nice feeling. It meant I could go and visit family, my elderly grandfather, for example, so waited for him to get his double, wait for a school holiday and off I went.
VW: All those hoops that you had to jump through before finally you get to see your grandfather?
LN: See my family, yes.
VW: Wow.
LN: Yes.
VW: Yes. Did you get vaccinated here at Downham?
LN: The first one, yes, and then Woodlands for my second, my doctor’s surgery, and both times amazing, efficient. Walk in, jab, out you go, brilliant, yes.
VW: Did you have any apprehension before you came?
LN: No, not really, but I felt elated, and I remember on my first trip here Matt was shift leader and he was geeing me up as I was in the waiting room. He said, “What does it mean to you?” I said, “Because then I could go and see family.” Yes, so that was amazing, that sort of feeling. I felt like, yes, you could conquer the world almost, just mentally, one step closer.
VW: I’ve been telling people that as we go in. I’ve gone, “Okay, I’ve clicked the first part of your ticket and then the second one, you are through the gate,” and another airplane metaphor obviously.
LN: Yes, and it doesn’t mean that we are all going out and being crazy and not following guidelines. Mentally, it just makes you think, “We are one step closer.” My mum lives in Spain so I haven’t seen her for ages as well.
VW: Wow.
LN: Yes.
VW: You said you are a keyworker, so does that mean you’ve been busy all the way through?
LN: Yes, yes, yes. We’ve not really stopped actually and especially during lockdown one, I’m a teacher and we didn’t stop. We worked through holidays, sometimes working over weekends, sometimes working much later after school delivering food parcels to families who were positive but had kids and no food. Yes, it was: I wouldn’t say “traumatic,” but it took a lot out of you, yes.
Because my husband doesn’t work in the City at the moment, he has been working at home, it is really hard explaining it to people what the city is like, because the schools in Inner London, it is really hard to explain how you feel.
People being more relaxed and more people back on the trains, and that sends your anxiety up because it is quite nice when there weren’t people on the trains, and the people that wear the masks as a chin warmer, you know, all of that, it has a real impact on you.
VW: I’ve felt like there are two parallel universes where the people who are just la-la-la, quite oblivious and they are like, “Oh, nothing has changed,” and then you are seeing a lot more obviously, with the parents and the kids. I’m sure you were in some of that relationship with the parents and kids before, but now there is even more to it because you are totally helping out their lives.
LN: Yes, and things people are worrying about, it is not what they are actually worrying about. You have to not be so thin-skinned. If people are cross or angry in the train stations or around school, it is not because of what you’ve necessarily done. It is because of what is happening in the world. I can’t change that, but I can make their children’s lives a bit better and deal with it differently.
VW: How has it been with the kids coming back to school after lockdown?
LN: After the first lockdown, so back in September, because it was staggered over last summer, they were just jubilant. Then, when it happened again in January, we were better equipped, so we’d been training the children over the autumn term to work online, to be more independent.
We donated so many laptops from companies as well as the government and the local authority. I joked it was click-and-collect for laptops.
It was nice seeing them when they came to collect, and it was lovely. You got messages on the schoolwork platform saying, “We want to come back. We want to come back.” We had to just make sure we phoned those children a bit more often. Sometimes the parents just wanted to talk for a long time about nothing really, but it is just nice to keep that school family going.
VW: Just that daily chat. It doesn’t have to be important. It is just another human.
LN: Yes, absolutely.
VW: A friendly face, yes.
LN: A human who I’m not living with (laughter) who I might want to punch(laughter), yes.
VW: How have your kids been going through the pandemic?
LN: They are actually quite resilient. They’ve attended lockdown school. Sometimes they’ve liked it, sometimes they’ve hated it, sometimes they just wanted to see their friends, their proper friends. But they are quite resilient, and we’ve just made sure that we do lots of nice things when we can.
Structure has been really important, giving that, although we can’t go and do X, Y and Z, and especially the parks. The second time, the parks haven’t been closed in the way they were the first time, and I haven’t allowed them to go into the park on the equipment because I’m very aware that if I contract COVID I take a lot of people out with me because of my job.
They’ve really had to understand that. “No, I know your friends are over there playing on the climbing frame, but you can’t mix in the same way because of my job and what I’m doing.” I buy them lots of chocolate instead or they can download a film that they want to watch, so we compromise. Long term, I don’t know, I don’t know.
VW: Wow, that is a lot to ask of a kid, isn’t it?
LN: It is, yes.
VW: It is not fair but they understand, obviously.
LN: Absolutely.
VW: What are you looking forward to doing when this latest level of lockdown eases, or when we get through a certain number of vaccinations?
LN: I don’t know, because I’ve been quite hesitant about going into the real world anyway, like a lot of people. My son turned 10 recently and we went to the Lego store in Leicester Square and queued, socially distanced. When we finally got in there it was great because there was hardly anyone in there. My husband, who hates queuing, was like, “Oh, this is actually nicer.”
I’m quite enjoying all these COVID restrictions because it means there are less people in certain areas. It means that when you go to the pub or the Model Market you don’t have to queue to 10 different stores to get what everyone wants. You just sit at a table and scan it in and pay for it. I love that. Not queuing at a bar is the most amazing thing ever.
VW: It feels a little bit like being a celebrity sometimes. There are only 20 people allowed in the bar or the store. It is like a private shop.
LN: It is!
VW: It is brilliant.
LN: Yes. We do most of our stuff locally so we are not going to big supermarkets or anything. We go to the smaller, local shops because that is really important for us to keep that local economy going.
Yes, I don’t know. I think the first thing is, my husband is French, so working out: can his family come to us? Can we go to them? My mum, who is in Spain and just, yes, keep going to see my granddad as often as I can.
VW: Where is your granddad?
LN: He is Stratford-upon-Avon, just very, very —
VW: Not that far, but then obviously it is an impossible distance.
LN: Yes, it is a bit of a train journey, especially for children in masks, because Oscar has turned 10 now so he has to wear a mask, so we are building up to that.
VW: How is the French vaccination programme going?
LN: I have no idea. I know, I’ve heard that there was less takeup over here, that is what I’m hearing. But to be honest, my husband doesn’t engage in that level of news because it really stresses him out, because I don’t think they’ve had the same take up and I know his parents are very reticent.
My mum in Spain, she has only just had her first and if she had been living here, she would have had it, double dosed ages ago. It is very different and all the quarantining and things like that, that is tricky too. Because my mum had to come over for my grandma’s funeral. She had to quarantine and couldn’t go to a funeral home like everyone else, and couldn’t — so that was tricky, yes.
VW: In theory, we are emerging into a new normal. I don’t know what it is going to look like, nor do you.
LN: No.
VW: Are you planning to keep on volunteering as long as you are needed?
LN: Yes, yes. I really felt as soon as everything opened up a little bit more, the volunteers became more desperate because people were busier working, going back to work or going out. Yes, I’m in it for the long haul, most definitely.
Every time I come here I go, “Oh, yes, I will train as a vaccinator,” and then I think about it a bit more and I’m like, “Well, I don’t think I can.”
VW: That is just me twisting your arm.
LN: No, Helen has really convinced me today as well because she is just like, “Yes, it is fine,” and nobody would let me do it if I was awful, that is what I keep telling myself.
VW: You are signed off by a doctor. It is proper. It is not just, “There you go, run riot with a needle.”
LN: There you go.
VW: Yes. But what would you say to someone who has thought about volunteering but hasn’t done it yet? How would you encourage someone to do it? What–
LN: I would say to always get in touch with the scheme because you can do as little or as much as you can, and you are not made to feel awful about it. I don’t do it very often because of my family, so it is a bit of selfish me time. It is nice to get away from all of them, but there is no time commitment really.
There have been times when I’ve had to leave a little bit earlier and that is fine, because I’ve had a prearranged thing. I think if you can do it, and don’t be worried about whether you’d be good, or there are so many people doing this and they are all making a difference.
It is just so nice to see a wide spectrum of society just mucking in, and this is what I think they would have been talking about in the Second World War and things so, yes, yes.
VW: Mark has described it as being like national service. We are all in it together.
LN: Absolutely.
VW: Another friend said it is like the little ships at Dunkirk. We are all sailing up to rescue one at a time.
LN: That is it, and it is just so nice to see so many people getting vaccinated, so that when you hear all those silly stories that you can just go, “I’m seeing 300 people getting vaccinated and skipping out.” Those horror stories are few and far between so…
VW: Our volunteers range in age from 17 to 84. We have wheelchair users, we have people who don’t like to sit down, we have people who don’t like to stand up, every ability is welcome here.
LN: Absolutely.
VW: It is.
LN: I convinced my 17-year-old cousin to do it because it will look good on his UCAS form, but also because I think he would be amazing at it as well.
VW: This will be taught in schools, I’m sure.
LN: Yes, yes.
VW: Not that I’m going to be sitting around reminiscing, but I can say that I did my part.
LN: Absolutely.
VW: I did a little something to make a difference and that is really important.
LN: Because how many of us felt so guilty in the early days that we weren’t NHS workers, you know? If we can do our bit to support that then that is all we need.
VW: Absolutely.
LN: Yes.
VW: Well, thank you for being a great admin and a future vaccinator.
LN: Thank you, Vicky. (Laughter)
VW: I will see you at Downham soon.
LN: Yes.
VW: Thank you from Lewisham Vaccination Stories.
LN: Thank you.