Remember to clap for our postal workers and delivery drivers too

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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/home ... -9qp2p6vm2

Remember to clap for our postal workers and delivery drivers too
It’s a different sort of frontline, but it is essential in its own way
Helen Davies
Sunday April 26 2020, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times

How have you been feeling this week? It seems as though this was the hardest one yet, now any novelty has faded, as the reality of our new looking-glass world hits home.

I would like to put forward a clap for the Royal Mail and all delivery services. It is a very different sort of front line, but essential in its own way — and it will be even more so as we seek to support businesses getting back to work.

In the past fortnight enterprising millennials, many of whom have found themselves jobless, have set up online businesses to support independent traders and add variety to our shopping diet. Charlotte Spencer, 28, started yourlocaldelivered.co.uk, which lists 200 or so farm shops, grocers and restaurants across the country that now deliver, after her brother James had to close his pub, the Hopbine, in Kent. Rebecca Fewtrell, 39, created a virtual high street where residents of York can buy from their favourite shops on one website (yorkhighstreet.com). You can find more local suppliers at smallbusinesssaturdayuk.com, or read our guide.

If you are in the market for home decor, try etsy.com, notonthehighstreet.com and trouva.com as well as the brands with the best garden furniture pieces that we feature this week.

I have two tips for buying online. Don’t buy above your pay grade, and use a tape measure. I was so tired of balancing on a woodwormed bistro chair that I ordered two glorious-looking wicker seats, perfect for a day’s reading. In our new Alice in Wonderland universe, let’s just say that when they arrived they were bigger than I imagined. I just about got each chair and its cushions up my stairs, but simply couldn’t get them from the kitchen to the garden, which is accessed down another flight of stairs.

I unplugged the fridge, took a door off its hinges and still spectacularly failed to wrangle them through to the great outdoors. All I managed to do was redecorate the walls with black marks.

A reverse ferret was called for. My neighbour kindly agreed to carry them through her wider ground-floor kitchen to her garden. Once there, while balanced on a ladder, she managed to pass the chairs over a 6ft fence.

It is just this sort of neighbourliness that is going to help us through. Small gestures can have a big impact. Remember, you can nominate your unsung heroes at

go.nextdoor.com/goodneighbourawards

helen.davies@sunday-times.co.uk