Sandra Chapman: Can we really keep the elderly locked down until autumn?

For the first two weeks the lockdown didn’t seem so bad, but then we start missing our friends and wider family. I haven’t been in the company of my brother, sisters and sister in law for three weeks and I really do miss them.

Still, it’s all necessary, but what if the lockdown lasts another three weeks with the elderly being lockdowned maybe until autumn as has been suggested by some politicians?

If they lockdown my generation I guarantee the economic recovery will not happen. Who else fills the shops, restaurants, cafes, holiday hotels and tourist areas but the older, retired generation?

We are regular shoppers, baby sitters, charity workers, club supporters and, for goodness sake, the garden centres, in particular, would feel the loss of us greatly.

It is true that practically every supermarket is its own garden centre these days, but I doubt they will ever replace the proper garden centre where we can spend an afternoon strolling around, choosing our plants, admiring the latest garden furniture and then settling into their coffee shop/café to discuss our purchases. No less a person than gardening expert Alan Titchmarsh believes the Government has been unfair to garden centres by deeming them non-essential, forcing them to close during this emergency whilst supermarkets can carry on selling plants and flowers.

He said this week that ‘if garden centres were to put in place the same protocols as supermarkets then they who earn their entire living from horticulture should be allowed to’.

I rang my regular garden centre for advice and, yes, they were closed but I could place an order by phone or online with them. I couldn’t visit and stroll around to pick what I wanted, but they could deliver a phoned order or I could pick it up so long as I stayed in the car on their driveway and paid by swiping my card. I was happy with that though it deprived me of seeing what promising new plants and garden decorations were available.

The colourful ladybirds on my garden shed door are not real, but metal, bought in the garden centre last year. It is this kind of trade that our garden centres will be deprived of and that is hardly fair to them.

Without any worries about rain the digging began, the ground being a lot harder than I expected, obviously due to the dry weather. The bags of compost, delivered to my door by the garden centre, were all used up in no time and two days later planting began, watched by my menagerie of pets.

Nightly watering was necessary but a great sense of satisfaction set in that despite the tough stance on garden centres people like me were able to progress our gardens.

So life was rosy then? Not quite. After a couple of days I noticed my dog wasn’t in great form. In fact he was throwing up over the lawn, though he wasn’t running a temperature. He still wanted to go out for his evening walk so I assumed that he would recover. On the second day of throwing up I was about to ring the vet for an appointment but decided to investigate more closely what he had brought up and it was plain to see that one or other cat had found a new toilet spot amongst the plants and one nosey dog decided it seemed good enough to eat.

I suppose there are more important things for the older generation to worry about than protecting their plants from inquisitive cats and dogs. For example, there are calls to remove the triple lock on the state pension – it rises by 2.5pc yearly – which could see the value of the pension fall back while prices rise.

The suggestion comes from the think tank Social Market Foundation, which believes the Government ‘should abandon the system to ensure the economy recovery from the coronavirus crisis is fair to working-age households’.

It must think, wrongly, that my generation has had it too good.

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