The last fortnight has been a difficult time for those who supply us with our daily needs.  I realise that God, who gives us life and daily blessings through His bounteous goodness, is the ultimate source of our daily needs.  But if we look at a more local level, we also rely heavily on those who transport our food supplies, household necessities and fuel for our cars.  And broadly speaking, we are talking about delivery vehicles and long-distance HGV drivers.

I had never considered before just how unpalatable a lorry driver’s working life must be.  I could see the need and obvious advantages to rising early in order to avoid the traffic on the motorway.  And I could imagine the lonely nature of the job, driving for hours by oneself in a cab, deprived of the company of family, as well as missing home comforts.  But I hadn’t realised the real hardship of long-distance lorry driving: the scarcity of formal rest areas, not having access to showers and bathroom facilities, having to eat cold snack meals without the facility for heating food, grabbing a few hours’ sleep on a small cabin bed without space to get undressed, parking in a lay-by next to a busy main road, with no television to watch and no way of relaxing in down-time.  It is a wonder that there are any drivers willing to take on this job at all, and those who are willing certainly deserve to be more highly paid for their unsociable working conditions.

In the last few days, many of us have been worried, if not completely stymied, by the unavailability of fuel which allows us to go to work, to drive our children to school or to visit our relatives.  It is concerning how finely balanced our daily existence is, and it really does not take much to throw our normal routines completely off-balance.  After leaving a meeting in church last week, I drove round several garages in the area because my tank was getting low, but I was unable to refuel.  I felt I was wasting precious fuel to no purpose.  I had enough petrol to get me home, but potentially not enough for all my commitments later in the week.  And that was a considerable source of anxiety for me.

I heard a suggestion during several TV interviews that key workers should be prioritised for purchasing fuel, but the practicalities of this seemed impossible.  Who would decide what constitutes a key worker?  No doubt many people have completely legitimate reasons for needing to refuel their car.  And which unlucky garage attendants would have the unenviable position of policing the forecourt, sending some drivers away, or lining the drivers and cars up in a graded order of precedence? 

The next day I was relieved and  impressed by the foresight of a local garage who restricted drivers to buying £20 of fuel, which meant that I, along with many more people, was able to buy some petrol to keep the car on the road.  I took the opportunity to tell the garage owners how much I approved of their decision to share out the limited resources more widely, rather than letting a few people take too much.  On a global scale, could this become our shared approach to all those commodities which we humans are in danger of exhausting? This would give us much more hope for the future of our planet.

Sarah Bourne, Chaplain for the Arts – 6^th Oct 2021               sarahbourne@banburystmary.org.uk