Involuntary

I know it is ridiculous to feel guilty that we are having a compulsory holiday in the Lake District sunshine, but I do all the same.

I keep trying to temper the joy of the warm spring air, and the blackbirds, and the drifting scent of hyacinths, by sternly reminding myself that outside the limits of our garden, dreadful things are happening. I am ambling about, cheerfully potting on the dahlias ready to go in the front garden, whilst all the time the rest of the world is struggling through an unspeakable disaster of unbelievable proportions.

Hence I was jolly relieved when this afternoon the email arrived from the NHS to tell me that we had been accepted as volunteers. It explained that we were now a part of the Volunteer Alert System, and needed to download a special NHS app  on to our phones.

It is an app which you switch on at times when you are available for volunteering, and then turn off when you have had enough.

I went to the App Store and tried to download it.

It asked me for my password.

I was supposed to have set this up when I registered as a volunteer.

I don’t know what possessed me when I did this, because in accordance with modern security advice, I foolishly allowed my computer to set a Strong Password on my behalf.

Everybody knows that the sensible thing to do is to use your name and date of birth as your password for absolutely everything, because otherwise you will forget what it is and not be able to use websites any more.

Obviously I had not only forgotten the Strong Password. I had not even looked at it in the first place.

My phone did not have the first idea what it was either.

In the end I found it on my computer and had to copy it manually on to the phone. This took several attempts because I have got fat fingers and kept getting it wrong. Eventually the phone stopped working and just showed a little wheel going round in the middle. I had to get Oliver to come and make it work for me again.

In the end I managed to sign in and got to the next bit, which showed me how I might be needed. The phone would tell me when there was an emergency in our street and I would have to dash to the rescue.

It was a bit vague about what I ought to do when I got there.

It played me a practice emergency siren so that I would know what it sounded like.

Then it wanted me to download a photograph so that people who I was helping would know who I was. You have got to wave your phone at people who need help so that they can see that you really are an NHS volunteer and not just some ordinarily helpful Joe Public who happens to be passing but who does not have Proper Authorisation.

I did not have a single photograph on which I was not pulling a ridiculous face. There were one or two taken on walks, and several of me when I have been drinking. I had a bright red nose on all of them.

I tried to take a photograph, which made the black spinning thing come back again.

I shouted Oliver, who rolled his eyes and came to look at my phone. He said that I had got about thirty apps running in the background, which might be why the phone was being rubbish. He showed me how to switch them off. I watched carefully but did not understand, so I will have to ask him again next time I do anything. It involved a level of finger-dexterity that I do not have.

When he had finished the spinning wheel was still there. He poked the phone a few times and eventually said that the app itself was not working properly, and that the thing to do would be to wait until later and try the whole thing all over again.

I am still waiting until later.

In the meantime I looked at the NHS email again, which said that they were still doing some update work on their App, so it might not work properly yet.

It is very exciting all the same.

Have a picture of Mark’s tidying up.