A Year in the Life of a Call Companion

August 2020

The country was limping through lockdowns and I’d had six glorious months. No work, just learning to do nothing and appreciating Ted talks on subjects like ‘the value of free time.’ Happy days, until a niggle crawled out of a corner and said it was time to contribute to society.

September 2020

Began delivering meals to shielders. Devon people often shield in grand houses or exquisite cottages so it felt like Deliveroo. But it was satisfying because, even if they didn’t really need free food, the shielders were desperate to talk. Loneliness was a pandemic before 2020 but lockdown made it worse.

Decided to change the world and abolish all loneliness. 

October 2020

Any snippet of news about loneliness, and what can be done became interesting, including call companion charities.  Happy stories of lonely people linking up with volunteers by phone and making lifelong friendships. I could do that. Meet one real lonely person, learn with a professional organisation and change the world later.

They gave me training, a name, and a number, with instructions to withhold my number for data protection.

November 2020

The first call to Francine, she talks fast and loud, 84 years old, with health and mobility problems, living in sheltered housing. Dear Beverley the carer comes twice a week and her friend Nina lives two doors away. They don’t like the man upstairs and whoever runs the housing is ‘useless’. Age Concern doesn’t do lunches anymore and she’s fed up with this lockdown nonsense.

December 2020

Calls are once a week for an hour. Francine tells me stuff.  Covid is a scam, lockdown is about money, poor Boris Johnson is doing the best he can and Biden is cooking the books in America to win the election.  Trump, now he knows a thing or two about how to run a country. 

I try to tell Francine stuff back but she is conveniently deaf.  If I say Trump is lying, she thinks I am talking about my cat.

January 2020

The storming of the White House is not mentioned.  We don’t discuss Trump these days.  Francine talks about her family. Her son lives nearby but he rarely visits. He has a guinea pig. We both like guinea pigs so we spend half an hour discussing ‘guinea pigs we have known’ and I google ‘Guinea pigs for sale’ and ‘Do Guinea pigs like cats?’ while we are talking.

The son told her that the vaccine is not to be trusted, he read about it on the internet, so we don’t talk about that.

She has a daughter who is selfish and difficult, so they fell out. A bad bit of me wonders about the daughter’s side of the story.

February 2020

Francine is more fed up.  Beverley has moved away and she doesn’t want a new carer, the man upstairs keeps shouting at her, she has not seen anybody for a week and there’s nothing on TV. She would love to go to a luncheon or social but we are back in ‘stupid’ lockdown.

I am fed up too. An hour on the phone is long when the other person can’t hear you. You can’t correct their opinions. 

At the end of each call, Francine sends her regards to my cats and suggests that I catch the train to come and meet her in person because it would be so lovely to meet, and she does enjoy our chats. 

March 2020

I order a carpet scraper online. A strange little wired contraption for pulling fluff and cat hairs out of carpets. 

Sometimes it is boring talking to Francine so I go along the carpet scraping hairs up to pass the time. The carpet looked great.  

Marcus Rashford is in the news for making a fuss about children going hungry. Francine says the trouble with young mothers today is that they don’t know how to cook, and just want benefits so they can buy fast food. 

Francine is French and tells harrowing tales of being a child during World War two in occupied France. If they were lucky her father would catch a rabbit but sometimes all they had for dinner was a turnip.  People these days just don’t know how lucky they are. 

April 2021

Nina next door got worried because Francine’s health is going downhill.  Francine says ‘we all have to die don’t we?’ and ‘I’m not going back to that hospital.’ Nina called the doctor behind Francine’s back and this caused a row so now they have fallen out.  

Age Concern set up a lunch meeting. At last, Francine can meet up with friends. But she doesn’t go because she had a ‘bad night’. It is daunting going out if you have been locked down for a year.

Struggling with things to talk about now.  Covid is only ‘a flu’, the vaccine is ‘too soon,’ her daughter is still selfish and there are grandchildren she never sees. I grumpily think ‘no wonder.’ 

We discuss recipes and she explains how to make a french casserole. ‘Always brown the onions first to bring out the flavour’ she says, in a motherly way. I think about that every time I fry onions now.

May 2021

Francine had a fall. She’s OK but had to wait hours, on her own, for an ambulance and it shook her up.  She’s not as fierce as usual but cheers up when I tell her I have been to the sea and tells me about her teenage years. 

In 1950 her English mother left France to work as a lady’s companion in Torquay.  She is delighted to find out that I live near Torquay and talks of summer days on the beach, living in a grand house and going to a private school. It was a life full of possibility before she met the man who gave her three children and left her to raise them alone. Every time I ring she asks if I have been swimming, and says how much she would love to see the sea again. 

June 2021

Sometimes we agree. Francine says that Boris should have locked us down earlier and politicians are lying.  Mostly she wishes her son would visit or that Beverly would come back or that Nina had not been so stupid.

She can talk though.  I have learnt to do yoga with one hand to my ear, which is more yoga than I usually do, or slump on the bed, half asleep saying ‘yes’ and ‘oh?’ at the right moments. 

July 2021    

We talk about what we like to eat and, every week, Francine mentions smoked haddock but she has not got any appetite. We talk about when we might meet up, and I wonder why I ever wanted to stop anybody from being lonely. Life is busy and it is a squeeze to get these calls in.   

August 2021

She doesn’t answer the phone.  Never mind. Maybe she finally got to one of those lunches.  Phew, a week off. 

No answer again.  I message my volunteer coordinator, she discovers that Francine is in hospital.

Data Protection. No, I can’t have contact details for her son, or an address to send a card. Francine can’t contact me because I withheld my number.

I email her local hospital and say ‘Have you got a Francine there? If so can you pass on my number and say she can call me?’   

Patient Liason Service say ‘We can find anybody if you have a date of birth’  How do I know?  Then I remember. She had a card from her son on Easter Monday.  Bingo, I get the date of birth, send it back triumphantly and my friend in PALS comes back with the message.  ‘I’ve found her’. We are sleuths now. 

September 2020

Job done. The message, with my number, was sent to the ward. Maybe she will call or maybe I will never know what happened.  Sometimes I ring her home, but the mailbox is full.

There are many ways to change the world. Not sure that was one of them in the end, but I got a glimpse of bone-deep loneliness that shouldn’t happen.

Hopefully, somebody else will completely re-structure society soon and sort out all the loneliness. Meanwhile, I am starting a walking group.  Update to follow, a year from now.