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It’s the “What if…” that’ll stop you in your tracks

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I’m not one to spend lots of time planning.  I am often the one saying: “oh yeah, I didn’t think of that”.  Sure, that has its drawbacks, but this behavioural tendency has got me doing marathons, open water swimming (for the first time on race day at Blenheim Triathlon – you too? It’s a common one), the 100 mile Ride London cycle, the first Tower Run up Tower 42 at 7am with a client, and going to night school to re-train as a solicitor whilst a musician (I know, that last one is a crazy one).  And that’s pretty much how this Serpie Mental Health blog came about. I thought the mental health champions could write something useful at the beginning of lockdown (thank you Jon Lewis), some people wrote in to say they liked it, and so I decided to publish something every week, instead of us all being together on the Wednesday club run….and that was 17 weeks ago – wow.  It is incredible we mostly all willingly mostly locked ourselves away for a good portion of the last 17
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The C word wrecked my running and it wasn't cake!

When we think about Covid-19 we usually think about life and death, lockdown and wondering when we can get back to the normality of sitting in a restaurant eating meals with our friends or going to the pub after a club run.  For some of us our thoughts of normality are just a little different…we are the survivors of Covid-19.  The day after 'lockdown' began I awoke in the stupid early hours with a cough that would just not stop and within a couple of hours my temperature was at 40 degrees, refusing to come down with medication.  It was pretty obvious at this point that this was not the flu and was likely to be Covid-19. Most parents of teens and preteens can only dream of escaping their offspring for a week away no matter how much they love them but I do not advise contracting the virus to do so. No sunny warm beach with a crystal blue sea and cocktails for me, instead I was shut away in a room coughing incessantly for over a week not wanting to eat or drink and wishin
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Life as a Hospital Volunteer during Lockdown

What did you do during the London Olympics? How did you make the most of a gap year? What’s the reason for those missing dates in your CV? Some questions are inevitable and at the outset of this pandemic we both felt in need of a positive answer to the question ‘What did you do during the Covid-19 pandemic?’    I (Catharine) started to look for volunteering opportunities once I had huge gap in my diary from the start of April (planned travel after finishing a contract at the end of March was cancelled for obvious reasons) and I was anxious about how I would cope in a lockdown situation as I live alone. Like thousands of others I applied to be an NHS volunteer (rejected), with both the Trussell Trust and Red Cross (accepted but all local opportunities had been filled) before I noticed a post in my local Mutual Aid WhatsApp group for Imperial Health Charity volunteers ( https://www.imperialcharity.org.uk/news/imperial-health-charity-volunteers-have-helped-to-deliver-over-130000-meal
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And so it continues....

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And so it continues...  Whilst lockdown in the UK begins to ease and we are able to see friends in small groups (at a social distance of course) and spend more time outside, life feels like, in some ways, it is beginning to get back to something we knew before.  However, the impact of the pandemic feels like the normal we knew is a thing of the past.  Building a new normal feels like the norm now and that it will be a long journey to get there.  But what will the new normal look like?  I was in Seoul last year on holiday (ahh, the good old days where you could actually take a holiday) and I was surprised at how many people wore face masks.  Before the pandemic, around 20% of Seoul residents wore masks and I understood why – the air quality is terrible and they had experienced multiple virus outbreaks previously.  Will our new normal look something like Seoul (hopefully with better air quality)?  Will face masks, social distancing and perhaps a slightly slower and quieter way of li
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What is "Elderly" please?!

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What is "Elderly" please? When Fliss asked me if I would like to contribute a short article concerning my experiences, during lockdown, 2020, I thought, I'm not in a position to write about how being in self-isolation has  affected my actual running, as I have run hardly at all in the last six years. But I have been a member of SRC, since November 1985 - a mind-boggling 35 years!   I started running in 1985, because I was approaching the age at which life is reputed to start - 40! I felt it to be quite a significant milestone and I needed to mark it somehow. Luckily for me, the 1980's saw the start of the worldwide, "jogging boom", which grew following the staging of the large city marathons - New York, London and so on.   I had been very keen on all sports, way back from when I was a teenager to training as a Specialist PE Teacher. Sport, however, to me always meant team games: hockey, cricket, tennis etc, never running as a solo activi
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A diary...

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Early Days: before the lockdown I write about my world:  it wasn’t an easy start to the year.  There was so much to say and I have had to cut it down. Some people will know that my daughter has terminal cancer, which was first diagnosed about 6 years ago. On 27 February I attended the cremation of the partner of one of my oldest friends – she died of ovarian cancer just as the virus was emerging. I was aware of the virus in China, etc.  My life however was mainly enjoyable with friends etc, my good solid relationship with Alison and the fact that I think I am fairly grounded and stable in life. My first real awareness of the world changing was on 2 March, when we met friends for a walk along the canal from Hackney to Kings Cross and I remember our joking about touching elbows.  We stopped for coffee in Broadway Market and I noticed how crowded it was. I was relieved we were a group of 4 and so had an area to ourselves – whereas Alison was just concerned we mightn’t get
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Well, this is taking a while, isn't it?

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*** It's Mental Health Awareness Week ***  Now more than ever, we need to look after not only our mental health, but that of others too W ell, this is taking a while, isn't it?  I don’t know how many of us expected lockdown to last this long. When my colleagues and I left the office in March, the scientific part of my brain didn’t expect to be back in there until at least June. But a softer side of my brain wanted to cling to the reassuring idea of ‘just be a few weeks.’ I’ve been working from home for two months now. For much of that time, working from home has meant working from hometown. I’ve still got my ‘grown-up job,’ but I’m sleeping in the bed I slept in as a teenager. So far, it’s been good – apart from when I had to suspend a new office buddy for misconduct. I could tolerate Jake jumping on the keyboard when all it meant was that his totally adorable face overshadowed any of my contributions in video meetings. But I had to take action, unfortuna
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