Lockdown On An Island

De: Bill Stenlake

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Lockdown On An Island Just imagine that you’re all alone on a remote island. No communications with the outside world and no one on the mainland appear to be aware you are there! But that is because they aren’t there anymore! It looked on the face of it to be an ideal opportunity to earn a hefty deposit for the house we wanted to buy, but could not afford where we live. I never imagined when I signed up, with 7 other people, for a 3 year project on a remote Scottish Island, that I would be left there when a pandemic struck the world, less than a year into my 3 year term. But that is what happened! The island is off the west coast of Scotland. We have a list of prohibited items that we are not allowed to take with us to the island. Of course, that doesn’t stop some of us from trying. Some people will always break the rules. There are no lists of items that we are recommended to take. That is left to us to decide. It is made harder by the fact that when we pack, we don’t even know where we are going and what will be there. When we arrive, there is nothing there but the island and a small jetty to land at. There is no electricity. We have no modern technology. We have no shelter other than the tents we are given to live in, while we construct our own shelter. We do have some building materials; wood, fixings and felt. We have a month to build something, before our tents are taken from us. We also have to prepare the land and sow crops to sustain us. We have been provided with some basic tools, spades and forks, to prepare the land. And we have been given some grain and vegetable seeds to grow. The idea is that we become self-sufficient, at least in the department of feeding ourselves. We have an axe and a saw, so we can cut up the dead wood in the woodland, for the fire. We have fishing rods and lines, so we can fish from the shore or the dinghy. That is pretty much it. Oh yes, and we have some chickens and some goats. Maria Covington will visit us each month to measure how we are managing in the project. Nobody foresaw a pandemic which would lockdown the entire country. When that happens, the monthly visits stop. Communication stops, even with the emergency phone, because the signal stops too. This is Lockdown, on an Island.