Dear LPG,

Although I understand that it will be a while before LPG will be able to post my message, I am writing this on July the 4^th 2020, first thing in the morning.  According to my understanding of the rulings from the powers that be, this is the day when many of the non-essential shops will be allowed to open up again, and we will all experience relative freedom for the first time in three months.  For many of us, especially we pensioners, it is as if we have been forced to keep our heads under water for all that time and today we will be able to come to the surface and breathe out.

The hairdressers and pubs will be amongst the shops that will be open for the first time in a long time and we will all be able to get back to a new sort of reality, but for one section of the population nothing will have changed and I suspect that nothing has changed about their living conditions all year, apart from the content of the daily news reports during that time. 

I am talking about those people who are housebound and have been for a lot longer than lock down.  I am talking about the people who can only get out with a lot of help from family and professionals who have to lift or wheel them to where they want to go. Those who suffer from conditions like claustrophobia; those who like us have largely depended on telephone communication and television entertainment but with one difference.  They have done this with the knowledge that they will not be able to pop to the shops even though such establishments are now open again. 

I know that there have been more people in the housebound trap than we think, and I have always accepted that it is not easy for them, but until now we have had no idea about what that really means. This pandemic and its consequences, that we are hopefully in the process of leaving behind us now, has given so many more of us an insight into just what being housebound means. 

We have all heard just how hard it has been to maintain relationships with those closest to us when you are stuck in their company for too long, and I suspect that many of those of us who have had no choice but to spend this time completely alone, have come to realise that we are not always our own best companions.  I don’t know the statistics and have always thought that there can’t be that many housebound people around but, when I come to think of it, I know two people who fit into the category myself.

So, as we emerge from the other side of lock-down, could I remind readers about those for whom the renewed freedom that everyone else will be taking for granted by the time LPG are able to print my message, that they have had a taste of what it is like to be trapped at home and, while we humans adapt to new situations really quickly and forget our recent trials, we need to take the lessons learned from our experiences and use them to try to understand what we can do to help improve the lot of the permanently housebound.

MP, Lewisham Park