Rob, our MD, has been managing customer demand, staffing and furlough rotations throughout the Covid-19 lockdown. He thought it might be interesting to ask our non-British employees (Milan, our Workshop Supervisor, and his partner Katarina) to write something about how they’ve been managing away from their families and home country during this strange and worrying period. The rest of this article is their own words (edited for English grammar but otherwise in their own words)…
“We were asked if we would be happy to write an article about how we have been managing lockdown in UK. We are originally from Slovakia but we have lived in the UK for many years now. England is a great country with a fantastic history and even more beautiful nature.
We work in a great and important company with amazing colleagues and an amazing boss.
The serious situation of Coronavirus has brought us all lots of negativity, but it’s important we also try to be positive, too. We cannot go to work, we cannot meet with our friends, kids can’t go to school and we are not able to visit our friends and relatives back home who we miss so much.
Unfortunately, so many people have fallen ill due to this Coronavirus outbreak and a lot of people have lost their loved ones. A good thing is that plenty of them have recovered and we can see some light at the end of the tunnel.
This pandemic doesn’t affect only us, our friends, family members and colleagues, or only Slovakia and the UK, but it affects all the people in the whole world.
But we need to try and think positively, right?
On furlough for some weeks, we have plenty of time which we can spend doing things we can’t really do during normal time when we need to go to work.
Milan’s photos of the beautiful English countryside are proof that we absolutely adore nature. In this lockdown, Milan has been able to fully engage in photography. He wakes up around 3 am almost every morning to catch the first sun rays and he’s also captured what is known by photographers as the “Golden Hour”.
When we go for a walk, no matter where, we always try to combine nice and useful things and we pick up the rubbish other people have left lying around. Unfortunately, we have found so much more rubbish during the lockdown than before, which is a shame to be honest.
Another good thing is that we spend more time cooking and baking; now we have an opportunity to bake fresh and delicious loaves of bread and cook our traditional meals. We can also read some books now that we had put aside for later and also watch news from all around the world. We also got inspired and made some hand-made wedding gifts as our friends are getting married.
Fortunately, we still have social media, and we can communicate with our friends and family through this source. Occasionally they send us some photos that they are doing well which is making us happier.
So even in a lockdown when we are quite limited, we are keeping ourselves busy. We have done lots of deep cleaning, cooking, reading, doing some DIY and tidying our house as well as outside.
All this is making us happy even in this difficult time and we hope that this pandemic will end soon and all of us can return to a regular life.”
You can browse some of Milan’s photos (shown above) of the English countryside here – have a browse, they are really quite good: https://www.ephoto.sk/uzivatel/minomilan/fotografie/