The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

This week marks a year since the UK first went into lockdown and we really began to feel the effects of living through a pandemic so today I thought I'd reflect on this time.  Back in late 2019 we heard reports of this new disease spreading in China. The media went a bit mad about it but we could all remember bird flu and swine flu and endless other viruses which led to hysteria among journalists but didn't affect our lives in any way. As 2020 dawned, it became apparent that Covid-19 would reach our shores and would kill people but the message we seemed to be given was that it was pretty much the same as regular flu and you'd be fine if you were young and healthy. Next thing we knew, the government were announcing that the country would shut down, we'd have to stay at home and could only leave for exercise once a day, and the world as we knew had changed. On the whole, I didn't mind the first lockdown. I'd been having a really stressful time at work and some tim...

I should being this post by stating that I have great affection for my Father. He stayed at home to look after me whilst my Mum went to work in a time where that was still highly unusual. He's therefore perhaps the biggest influence on who I am today.  He's also full of rubbish. I suspect he would agree with me. We spent quite a lot of time together during 2020 thanks to lockdown and I began to notice he was a constant source of irrelevant and often banal trivia. I began to make a note of the trivia he spouted on my phone under the title "Dad Facts". I use the word 'fact' quite loosely as I suspect many of these may not be entirely true and I have not looked into them any further.  Here are twenty Dad Facts from the last year: 1. The town of Blandford in Dorset burnt down in 1731 and was rebuilt in brick and tile. This is why houses are not generally built of wood and thatch anymore.   It seems quite a stretch to me that one large fire could be considered resp...

Sometimes things don’t quite end up going as you imagine them. Shortly after discovering I was going to be able to have the Covid vaccination, I had a thought about a blog post. Knowing that I would probably have received the vaccination before most people that read this, I thought it would be a good opportunity to reassure people and I would write about how easy it was and how I had, at worst, minor side-effects. But that’s not what happened. I’m well aware that there is a lot of debate at the moment about who should be next in line for receiving the vaccinations, and I don’t think there’s really any right answers to that. In reality everybody needs to have it soon as possible (at least it now looks like we'll all have had it by August). All I know is that due to the high risk of working with children with special needs that are vulnerable and unable to socially distance, I found myself suddenly eligible to have the vaccination. To my surprise, I found I was able to book to have i...

Previously on The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan : I finally moved into my own flat and the UK entered yet another national lockdown. The last few weeks have felt like a real rollercoaster. I've faced boredom, stress, frustration and elation from one day to the next. Working through lockdown has provided all sorts of challenges I wouldn't have foreseen and sometimes it can feel overwhelming when staffing is affected by a Covid-outbreak and I head off to work whilst most people I know remain at home. There's a certain pride in being there for our students though, a feeling of purpose that I didn't really feel during the first lockdown.   Life in the new flat is, on the whole, excellent. There's a sense of freedom that I've never had in my life before which is so lovely. Whether it was at home with Mum and Dad or at uni with my various housemates I'd always shared kitchens and bathrooms and suddenly I have my own space that I use freely. I can go to bed...

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day which is a memorial day which doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves it despite it being probably more important than any other.   It can be hard to process the sheer number of people that were murdered in the Holocaust. As a huge number it’s fairly meaningless but it’s individual stories to bring home the true atrocity. Take the story of Vilma Grünwald who was 39 years old. She had been held at Auschwitz for seven months along with her husband and two sons (though they were held separately). SS doctor Josef Mengele spotted her son John walking with a limp and directed him towards the gas chamber. Vilma couldn’t let her son go alone so she immediately followed him. She managed to get a note to her husband who survived the death camp which is how we know this story. When you read very human stories like this it feels horrifically more real.  Back when I was 18 I visited Auschwitz and it was an experience that forever changed me. It taught ...

I’m not going to lie to you: this week has been a tough one. Whilst there wasn’t a massive surprise in the government announcing Lockdown 3 ( Lockdown: The Last Stand ? Lockdown 3: Hell on Earth ?) it hit me quite hard and I wasn’t really expecting that to happen. In the first lockdown I was glad for a break from work and happy to have the time spent at home, which was what I needed at the time. But that was nearly a year ago and things have changed. What was good for me then is not good for me now. I wanted to be at work which has been so fulfilling this academic year and instead I found myself alone in my flat. Perhaps my biggest worry about moving out to live on my own was the potential to feel a bit isolated from the world. When you’re at work it’s not quite the same but suddenly I had the prospect of potentially no work at all. The other issues was that I still don’t have internet access which further adds to the isolated feeling. It was quite stressful waiting for six hours for a...

Previously on The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan : I bought a flat and began a new life... Hello and happy New Year to you all. It's always an odd time that week between Christmas and New Year but for me it's felt especially strange. It's the first full week I've spent in my new flat and I'm started to get used to the idea of living on my own.  Having a completely new start adds all sorts of complications. It meant that whenever I went to do anything I'd have to grapple with how to work it, from the front door to the heating to the oven to the TV. I'm drowning in a sea of instruction manuals. Then there was the sea of admin to organise various utilities bills. I spent an hour one day trying to find my gas meter because when you live in a house that has been converted into two flats things just end up in random places.  After a while though things I began to feel a familiarity and it started to feel like my home rather than simply the place I was sleeping. I...