Heart-felt

One of my old school friends has a son who is  a policeman, married to a nurse. They have a little boy who has just started school. Due to the price of housing in the city where they work, and the cost of childcare, they live close to family and consequently have a seventy mile commute. 

As front-line staff, both of them, they have arranged their work patterns so that one works twelve and a half hour shifts on three days of the week, and the other ten and a half hour shifts on four days a week. The little boy can still go to school, but how to get him there and back, now the grandparents can't help, because they are  70+ and with  existing health conditions.

Somehow, they are managing, living like ships that pass in the night,  trying to maintain some semblance of normality for their son.

This heart is for them and the many who find themselves facing this sort of challenge: being asked to go far beyond the call of duty and stepping up to the mark, at huge personal sacrifice.

I hope, I so much hope, that they will be remembered when all this is over, and that we take a long, hard look at our priorities, as a country, and try to make our society fairer. Do you think we can do it? 

And I'm not forgetting the shop workers, the delivery drivers, the farmers, the teachers, the bin men, and all the other essential service workers, deserving our admiration, our gratitude and above all recognition of the essential roles they play in our national life.