London lockdown, NHS lambs to the slaughter and carbs, carbs and more carbs

The feature photograph of me was taken in July 2018 on a warm sunny day. I was expecting a tough day at work so I pulled out my red lipstick.  It always makes me feel good.  I am wearing a striped black and white pencil skirt as you will see from another shot of me from the day. I was at least 35 lbs heavier than I am today but I love the way I rocked my figure in this outfit.

I was always a bit of a daydreamer and this affected my performance in subjects like maths, physics chemistry but never biology.  I loved biology almost as much as fine art.    I employed my drawing skills in biology and always scored top marks whenever a question involved doing a drawing.  With the benefit of hindsight, moving from one secondary school to another and then having unhelpful teachers was a terrible combination and led to me dropping chemistry, physics and additional mathematics and picking up history and English literature.  On a practical level, they were better subjects because they were easier to pick up whenever I returned from daydreaming.  It has taken me years to realise that I was bright enough to be a doctor if I had wanted to.  However, I don’t regret law as an alternative career choice – not completely anyway, but that’s a story for another day.

3 of my 5 siblings are NHS doctors

The long and short of the story is that 3 of my 5 siblings are doctors and now work for the NHS.  I have watched them at different stages of their careers and know that it has been a slog.  I know how hard it has been for them to complete their medical degrees in Nigeria and Ghana and then face the uphill struggle to practice in the United Kingdom.  My mother is a retired nurse that worked in the NHS too and faced a lot of discrimination and racism in her time.  While the discrimination has not been as raw and direct as it was in our mother’s time, my siblings have not had it easy.  To add insult to injury, we had the long-running battle that junior doctors had with the government not so long ago.  Sitting on the sidelines and watching the situation unfold, I never got the impression that the British public had much sympathy for junior doctors or doctors in the general.  As a result, a lot of doctors have left careers in the NHS to work in countries like Australia and New Zealand in pursuit of better pay and conditions to enable them to escape the stress and have a chance of a better work/life balance.

Will the British public still love the NHS workers in quite the same way when this pandemic is over?

With the deepening crisis of covid-19 pandemic, I have been increasingly worried about the health and safety of my siblings and their colleagues.  NHS workers are now being held in such high esteem by members of the public.  Anyone who watched the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012 will know how much pride British people have in the NHS but even so, there was not much sympathy with NHS workers when they complained about their pay and working conditions.  To that end, I have been giving the whole #ClapForNHS the side-eye.  The British public seems to have gone from accusing NHS workers of being spoilt, greedy and irresponsible for considering going on strike to now considering them to be the salt of the earth overnight because of the threat of  covid-19.  The public is prepared to overlook the lack of personal protective equipment as they #ClapForNHS as our underpaid, overworked and undervalued NHS workers march off to the front like soldiers heading off to war barefooted, without armour, guns or helmets. I gather than over 50 doctors have died in Italy https://www.newsweek.com/more-50-doctors-italy-have-now-died-coronavirus-1494781 and in Britain, we recently lost organ transplant consultant, Adil El Tayer on 25 March 2020.  May his soul rest in perfect peace. You can find out more by clicking the following link   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52064450

Worry & weight gain

So as you can imagine, I have not been in the best of moods.  I have been worried a lot and there were times when I wanted to visit but as we are all practising social distancing I had to stay put at home.  To distract myself I have been watching loads of TV, social media and reading scary WhatsApp messages.  I have not been exercising much and all my grand plans to reorganise my home have so far fallen to the wayside.  I have also been speaking to relatives – having a long catch up telephone calls with them.  I fret and worry when I don’t hear from loved ones – both friends and family but I guess that this endless fretting and worrying is now part of the new normal.  Apparently, this virus is going come back in a second wave and after that, there is another one called the hantavirus waiting in the wings. https://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/index.html It is supposed to be a mutation of covid-19 and has already killed at least one person in China.

Eating too many carbs 

On the upside, when I finally managed to pull myself out for a walk, I put out the rubbish and did some shopping.  I was so happy to see that there is less panic buying going on.  I was able to buy eggs, bread and fresh salads from Sainsbury’s.  However, there was still no toilet roll to be seen.  If you follow my social media on Instagram and Facebook, in particular, you will see that I panic bought a huge bag of Basmati rice.  I have eaten more carbohydrates in the last couple of weeks than I did in the whole of 2019 and it is all sitting on my stomach.  I have eaten all the nuts that I bought to last a month.  I still have pitta bread and oven chips to eat.  As the chips are frozen, I plan to cook them up for guests when we get past the pandemic and give the bag of rice to a food bank.

My weight has fluctuated all week as you can imagine, but by some miracle, I have managed not to put on any more weight. I will let you know my plans to get back on track in my next blog post.

#NoToTheYoYo  #YesToAstableWeight #NoTimeToPauseForMenopause #YesToAstableHealthyWeight #Menologues #WeightLossJourney

Is anyone else panic buying things that they would not normally eat because of the coronavirus pandemic? I had given up buying rice before the pandemic but here I am having panic purchased g a bag for a penny under £40! Sainsbury’s had no more rice, pasta, milk, eggs and so on so I decided to go to a small independent shop.  I spotted this bag of rice and paid for it.  I was so laden with shopping that I had to return the next day on Saturday to take it home.  Fingers crossed, I will not have to open the bag at all during the pandemic and will be able to donate it to a food bank when this is over.  As many of you know, I cannot be trusted around rice so it would be better to donate it to a food bank than wear it around my core!