Alert

We had our very first NHS Volunteer alert today.

It was not an unqualified success.

Actually it was total rubbish.

It works by a siren going off on your phone. This alert tells you that somebody close by is in Dire Need, and that you, as an NHS Trusted Volunteer, need to leap into some sort of immediate chivalrous action.

Mark had gone over to the farm, and I was at home by myself, and when the siren went off I had no idea what it was.

It was very loud, and sounded just like an air raid, except a few moments consideration reassured me that we are not actually at war. This is merely a metaphor being used by the Government to encourage old ladies to knit PPE and send food parcels to anybody who is occupied building the Nightingale Hospitals. If we are all busy Keeping Calm and Supporting Our Brave Boys At The Front then we are not likely to start getting bolshie and sloping off out of lockdown to visit speakeasies when the police have all gone home.

I did not know what the noise was at all, so I went into the garden to see if anybody’s house was on fire, at which point it stopped.

A few minutes later it occurred to me that perhaps it might be the NHS thing, so I unearthed my phone from beneath a pile of plant pots in the conservatory, and had a look.

To my great disappointment it was indeed showing a missed alert, and then it rang.

It was Mark. His phone had made the siren noise when mine had stopped, presumably because he was the next nearest Emergency Volunteer. He had pressed the button declaring himself available, and wanted to know what to do next.

I did not know.

In the end we discovered that there would be a message somewhere on the app, with a phone number to ring for the Next Instructions, like in a treasure hunt.

He looked at this and rang the number.

It turned out to be an old chap in the village who had pressed the NHS App by mistake when his phone was in his pocket. He did not need help of any kind at all, although he was surprised and pleased to hear that Mark would have dashed round to assist him if he had been having a crisis. Of course under those circumstances, unemployed taxi drivers turning up on your doorstep is the very thing to make everything all right again, what a marvellous reassurance that must be.

We stopped worrying about it. The siren has not gone off again since, although if it does we will be ready. We know what it is now.

Mark took the picture on our morning walk, you can just about see my new haircut. It is a jolly good angle for a photograph because I am hardly grey at all, if you look from the front I look as though I have dipped my head in a tub of battleship paint.

It was a splendid walk. Windermere has become thoroughly quiet, apart from some terrifically noisy birds. We were distracted this morning by some crows having a full-volume disagreement over a prime nesting site, it seemed that one pair had had their eye on it and been gazumped. The resulting discussion could be heard all over the village.

The pigeons have decided not to come to live in our bay tree after all, much to my disappointment. It appears to be too close to Mark’s shed for their liking, a preference for which I can hardly fault them. They did investigate my office windowsill for a while, and came and peered in at me to see if they liked the idea of having me as a neighbour, burbling interrogatively at one another whilst they discussed it. In the end they didn’t, and eventually, to my regret, they gave up and moved on.

They seemed like a happy couple. I hope they find somewhere nice.

It is probably best for the washing, though.