Day 4

An open letter to the Chancellor and The Prime Minister

So here we are in day 4 of my isolation. These are my thoughts today.

I am 75 years old self-employed, rent my one bed flat, and still working, well until last Friday.
Friday I gave my taxi back to the company I had been renting it from,  (which incidentally is my personal transport as well ), and retired to my flat I have paid my rent for the next three weeks, so have a roof over my head until then. I went to my regular shops yesterday to try and get a loaf of bread and some eggs but no luck, oh I did manage to buy 4 scotch eggs, very cheap £1.00 for two in Marks, and a cauliflower cheese ( my supper last night ), so now my fridge is looking a bit empty I have enough veg for a few days of homemade soup, and some packs of rice and pasta courtesy of my daughter. So I am probably ok for a week, and when you look at the refugees in the middle east, I am very lucky

Until Friday I was doing a government school contract bringing in £475 a week, that sounds pretty good I can hear you say, but bear in mind I have to pay £200 rent on my car a week, 20% commission on this contract to my company 848 cars which is £95 a week and probably my weekly diesel comes in at roughly £130 (incidently 60% of that is tax so over the last 15 years I have probably paid somewhere like £60,000.00 to the exchequer) so for 20 hours a week I am making £50, £2.50 an hour. So until the last two weeks, I have been making my money up working on our taxi circuit, doing airport runs and general taxi work around the town, but for the last two weeks I have been increasingly dropping this work because of the virus and my concern about catching it especially regarding my age and my family.

So here am I today quite a bit of debt (probably $8,000.00 generally manageable usually ) no income apart from £140 a week pension (which I also pay tax on),
and my monthly expenses are:-

my rent of   £645.00
council tax   107.00,
water              30 
electricity       50
insurance        20
food               400
phone (work)  70
income tax      240
So my usual monthly expenses are roughly £ 1562.00

So now not much food in my fridge, well I will be alright for a few days,. Not getting my exercise the gym is now closed, not seeing my family, no trip on the horizon. All the Government websites the FSB website not working and no idea how I am going to survive the next 14 weeks. Because of my age even though I have continuously paid taxes I don't think I can claim Universal Benefit or Sick Pay.
I will lose my flat after 3 weeks so after a couple of weeks I will have to go back to work.
Kind regards
John Rolfe.
My tax no 76080 40835

Day 2 of isolation.

For some time now I have been into The Secret and The Law of Attraction, does it work overall I think it does, but yesterday I watched Manifesting The Movie https://manifesting.com/watch I found it uplifting and invigorating, I think I might watch it every morning it's great to be surrounded with such positive people in times like this.

So this was my fridge this morning, no eggs last two slices of bread, thirty minutes later there was a knock on the door and my (Can only describe him as wonderful ) nephew was outside with a loaf of bread and six eggs, I had asked for a small thing and there it was, so maybe this manifesting thing really works. One of the things that The Secret and Manifesting teaches if that's the right word is gratitude and started to think what an amazing life I have had, especially the last probably 20 years, some of the people that I have met and the friends that have often appeared in the right places at the right time, my work colleagues, my family ( its Mothers Day today so I must mention my mum ), my daughter and more recently Moses my grandson. Here I must mention Sandy who I met skating at Rollerworld, we started skating all over the place, and when he moved to Nice and had an apartment there I travelled there I think 40 times in 5 years (Easyjet flights were cheap and I often got a free flight ), when he moved to Manila it opened up a whole new world to me of travel, to beautiful Philippine islands, Bali, Bangkok, and Hong Kong. So where am I going with this, maybe The Universe does give us what we want at the time and now it seems to be going badly, its time to hunker down and look forward to what we can achieve now and look forward to what we want when we can travel again and meet our friends.
Yesterday I started The 21-day Copy Writing challenge from Anik Singal seems a good idea to take this time to educate and move forward. I want to write a short concise book easy to read and follow on getting your own website and an online business up and running. I think like they say everyone has a book in them  a lot of people have an idea to start their own business and maybe a lot of people will have the time to do this now (it's not so hard )  I already have a rough website that features this www.startinganonlinebusiness.company  (don't look today I think we have a technical issue)
So I have a loaf of bread now and some eggs, things are looking up and will be doing module 2 of The Copy Writing 21 day Challange.

My First Post

My Isolation Blog

Hi I am John Rolfe, until yesterday I was bobbling along quite happy, working reasonable hard running a taxi and trying various other ideas to make money online, I have to mention my taxi boss Andy who I have been working with nearly 15 years and is a quite amazing bubbly person.

I have been looking forward to my next trip to the Philippines, meeting my best mate Sandy and my friends there on some of the best islands in the world. Here I try to swim every day at Virgin Active and having a coffee in the club with my friends Peter, Andy and Vince, and the staff at the club who are all so friendly and make going there such a lovely experience. Of course, I have my family here my daughter Vicky and her husband Everol with my grandson Moses who is two and half years old, such a bundle of energy and fun.

My age is 75 years I am 6” 2” tall and had a shock this morning and found I am now 114.8 kilos and 29 BMI. So I am always thinking I should lose some weight and that will help my blood pressure which is under control with medication.

All that is just a quick introduction to my life, that was until yesterday, being in the at-risk group the government has issued guidelines that say people my age have to isolate for 14 weeks. So yesterday I gave my taxi back (which incidentally is my personal transport as well ), and retired to my flat I have paid my rent for the next three weeks, so have a roof over my head until then. I went to my regular shops yesterday to try and get a loaf of bread and some eggs but no luck, oh I did manage to buy 4 scotch eggs, very cheap £1.00 for two in Marks, and a cauliflower cheese ( my supper last night ), so now my fridge is looking a bit empty I have enough veg for a few days of homemade soup, and some packs of rice and pasta courtesy of my daughter. So I am probably ok for a week, and when you look at the refugees in the middle east, I am very lucky.

Until yesterday I was doing a government school contract bringing in £475 a week, that sounds pretty good I can hear you say, but bear in mind I have to pay £200 rent on my car a week, 20% commission on this contract to my company 848 cars which is £95 a week and probably my weekly diesel comes in at roughly £130 so for 20 hours a week I am making £50, £2.50 an hour. So until the last two weeks, I have been making my money up working on our taxi circuit, doing airport runs and general taxi work around the town, but for the last two weeks I have been increasingly dropping this work because of the virus and my concern about catching it especially regarding my age and my family.

So here am I today quite a bit of debt, no income apart from £140 a week pension, and my rent of £150 plus all the usual expenses council tax, water, electricity, insurance, not much food in my fridge, well I will be alright for a few days,. Not getting my exercise the gym is now closed, not seeing my family, no trip on the horizon. All the Government websites the FSB website not working and no idea how I am going to survive the next 14 weeks.