Hello. I wrote this blog a couple of weeks ago now but I am finding its content is still very relevant to me. Hope you find it pertinent too.
I hope you have enjoyed the very hot weather or if you are like me, following the coolest room around the house because anything over 20 degrees and my body thermostat goes crazy. Using a fan we bought in Majorca nearly 20 years ago, which amazingly is still working and keeping us cool. Thank goodness the hot weather has ended now although the resulting storms have caused mayhem around the country.
We have been busy since returning from Cornwall, enjoying time with our Grandson. He built a Time Machine on Monday (emptying most of the drawers and cupboards in the house in the process). We travelled through every conflict and disaster starting from the early dinosaurs. “No not the ordinary ones Nanny, the ones that lived in the sea before the others", apparently, they were bigger and scarier. I then had some explaining to do on the Civil War, when we also had to stop the machine so he could fight with a pike and make sure Cromwell, with the wart, was well and truly finished off. After old Charles had his Head removed of course! Then we had the plague and the Great Fire of London to survive followed closely by the First and Second World Wars.
Are all 6 year olds this blood thirsty?
Still it has made me think how risky life was….
And still is a fairly risky business. Every day we are consciously and sub-consciously making risk assessments as we go about our daily lives.
Companies have spent a lot of money calculating risk as part of their business decisions. In fact whole departments of people are there purely to assess risk and its management.
Risk is all around us, in every shape and form and most of us have learned to live with it. In fact it forms an important part of our developmental skills during childhood.
“Everyday life is full of risks and challenges and children need opportunities to develop the skills associated with managing risk and making informed judgements about risks from a very young age. Risky play helps to develop important life skill learnings such as; Building resilience and persistence.” 26 Oct 2016
Lockdown limited, if just for a while, the need for us to risk assess quite so much. The choices for those who didn’t have to remain in a workplace were limited and if you adhered to the rules, our decisions on risk were based purely on basic human need:- food and health. Those two rudimentary human needs were the only time we had to make a judgement on the levels of risk we were prepared to take.
Recently I have been wondering if people like me, are suddenly finding that they are having to review their previous decisions on risk. For instance, all of a sudden going for a coffee and cake in that rather lovely looking café we have come across is not something I do on impulse. A risk assessment is now required. Popping into the shop for that perfect looking dress in the sale - risk assessment. Going away on a short holiday – risk assessment. Visiting and walking with friends – risk assessment. Meal out - risk assessment. I could go on.
All the things that previously wouldn’t have required much more than a cursory thought, holiday planning apart, now require much more cognitive reasoning on my part and personally I think it is rather tiring. Or to word it another way it wears me out, I am also aware I am finding it extremely frustrating.
I appreciate even at my ‘young age’ we become more risk averse, but I am discovering that the conflict between this and going about a reasonably ‘normal and enjoyable life’ can be exhausting and frustrating. Most of the everyday simple things I enjoy and if I am honest have been taking for granted, now have a bit of an edge to them. I am having to re-program my risk assessment ability to enable me to cope with the ever changing national and global position due to Coronavirus.
For example we live in an extremely popular tourist town and with many of us stuck in Britain during the holidays, having made that personal risk assessment not to travel abroad, days out have become a popular alternative. People are flocking to our corner of ‘this green and pleasant land’ and I don’t blame them. We are lucky to live in such a pretty and desirable town. As I walked along the streets the other day, to get some shopping and saw the mass of bobbing heads, queues of people unable to socially distance, dropping their waste and ignoring the one way signs, I made an immediate risk assessment and decided it was safer and I would remain saner, to enjoy my local environment and get my shopping before 10am. Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful to see the town come back to life. I simply feel sad that I don’t feel comfortable enough to enjoy it.
On a more positive note, that does mean we are going out and about in search of those out of the way places, where we can take Hygge, be self-sufficient and enjoy the beauty of Britain in peace and quiet.
For those of you who have been shielding for the past few months I can’t help thinking how difficult decisions on acceptable risk must be, now you are in the position of being ‘allowed out’ but are not sure if you want to take that risk. Having been confined for so long and with your freedoms taken away I can’t possibly imagine how difficult it is to return to a new normal. Where do you start in your process of reassessing risk? For some it must be a terrifying and overwhelming prospect. This also raises the question of whether there is any help out there to support and guide you in your risk assessment?
Recently Garry and I both had an appointment to see our Chiropractor but before we could attend we had to fill out an online personal health questionnaire. At the bottom of the form was a disclaimer, which basically said attendance did run a risk of catching Covid 19. That certainly stopped me in my tracks for a moment. Another re-assessment of a previous risk assessment was required. Weighing up my painful knees and back and inability to enjoy our usual walks, against the chance of contracting Covid 19. What should I do? We both attended by the way!
I guess a balance between quality and quantity of life comes into the decision making for both of us, but this is yet another example of everyday changes to our previously risk-assessed activities. Requiring yet more mental machinations!
To top it all, the normal interaction we would enjoy with our fellow humans, which is an important part of our human makeup, is currently no longer possible with social distancing and face masks. And when is it all going to end? Will things ever return to normal? (Oh no I’m using that word again!)
I think I will stop there as that’s quite enough of my recent thoughts for one blog.
I think I am just going to have to accept that for the time being and for the foreseeable future I will just have to get used to re-assessing my previously risk assessed activities. 'Like it or lump it!' As my 'Little Gran' used to say. She was wise, I thought as a child, and had meaningful words for all occasions.
On a lighter note, I find I am becoming rather absent minded these days. Forgetting what day of the week it is. Having to write everything in our calendar so we don’t forget it, from meeting up or facetiming with friends to which bins to put out and on what day each week!
Or the time I managed to do the gardening in my slippers and come back indoors and dutifully put my gardening shoes on to walk around the house. Leaving a lovely trail of mud everywhere I went.
We’ve also managed to lock ourselves out of the house (first time ever) and why or why does it take us so long to get out of the house in the first place? It seems to take an age to find, shoes, purse, glasses, bags and then once we get outside, find we have left the windows open or forgotten our masks, hand sanitizer or the shopping list we dutifully wrote during breakfast.
Then there was the memorable time we set off for the supermarket and Garry drove quite happily in totally the wrong direction. It wasn’t until I asked him where we were going that he realised what he had done!
I could go on but I need a rest and I don’t want to leave you with the impression we are totally bonkers. (Even if we are – slightly).
Bye for now and thank you for taking the time to read my blogs.
All non campervanhygge photos can be found FOC on Unsplash
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