Ian Renwick

The Merediths of Christie Gardens

Had a flashback overnight.  

A young, Welsh-speaking couple were neighbours in Chadwell Heath. When I was about 10.

I was introduced. to cheese and jam sandwiches and bread with caraway seeds by the young Merediths.



Guardian Letter 22/12

 I was 18 when I first walked on to a Covid ward. I began the year studying cells and chemistry with my friends in sixth form and I ended it donning scrubs on my own in a small staff toilet preparing to cross the red line. I sat in the corner as a nurse asked if a family wanted to be taught how to put on PPE so they could see their daughter. “No,” they replied. They had done this many times before. Today was goodbye.

Later that morning, in a sombre silence broken only by the buzzing and beeping of life-saving equipment, I assisted in taking a woman to the mortuary. This was my fourth trip of the day, but this time I noticed that the patient’s tag said she was scarcely much older than me. I took my break alone, to keep myself and others safe.

That evening, I bought myself a pizza and ate it in a car park by the sea. The police promptly came and told me to go home. Perhaps I should have worn a suit and said it was a work meeting.
Louis Sanderson
Exeter, Devon