Voices from The Coronavirus - from marketing consultant to shelf stacker

Colin Doubleday was, until 3 weeks ago a part-time marketing consultant and part-time TV actor. He lives alone in Old Town where he enjoys playing sport, music, cooking and hanging out with friends and family. He is a new starter at the Tesco Extra megastore where he never thought he would be stacking shelves at this point in his life. And he is enjoying growing a beard with no Casting Director to say no! Here's his voice.

How did I go back to the job I was doing at 16?

So as someone with a mixed income and activity, you never expect it all to stop within a week. Since I finished with full time corporate career a while back it seems that when one thing stops another opportunity comes up, being busy there is always something else to do.

But in one week my marketing consultancy prospects all stopped as companies found that they either didn’t have the focus or finances to talk about future projects; then TV companies stopped filming, cancelling all my confirmed acting jobs; and then, my regular commercial visitor no longer wanted to rent my Airbnb room…….

It stopped.  Not just my income for the next, well however long. As a busy person, well I was very unsure what I could do with myself: no business proposals to write, phone calls to make, audition tapes to record or even dirty sheets to wash.

One evening I played the last sad game of football and went home, yes, not to the pub like every other Friday. I poured a glass of wine and thought, ‘What to do?’. And instinct kicked in; surely the supermarkets would need some help. I sat there and applied for a couple of supermarket jobs; it wouldn’t be that bad, I’d done it before. Saturday was a real surprise, ‘Please can you come for an interview’. By Monday mid-morning I was stood by the shelves in Tesco filling up the Pepsi that had been emptied in a couple of hours.

We all have different experiences of life under lockdown. I am a single guy who lives alone, but I spend a lot of my life with people………..  watching music, working in businesses, acting on set, playing sport, cooking or chatting with friends. OK, I am sure it is not always as smiley as that sounds but I try always to be doing something and I like to be involved. I had already set up a WhatsApp group for our street and I was shopping for my mother and a couple of other vulnerable friends and relatives, but what else could I do?

That was the opportunity to turn my negatives into a positive. With no one at home to depend on me I also had no one to cross-infect should the worst thing happen at my new job. Yes, I am seeing the public every day, but if I do get sick I will go home to self-isolate. I have friends and family who will drop off some groceries and check that I get the right care. There is an element of risk, but it is contained to me, I am not the key pin of a family.

It was strange to go back to a job I had last done when I was a sixth former and I was fascinated to see how little had really changed. Day 1, a colleague asked me if I was from head office; day 2 my boss said I was self-managed and just try to keep showing a good example. Myself, I just wanted to work hard, it’s good fitness and I hate standing around.

As a marketing man I have been busy watching the people around me. How have their purchasing patterns changed because they are staying at home or because they can’t buy the normal brands or products they might like? Why are there so many versions of Pepsi in so many different bottles and cans?  And if no one has bought any strawberry-flavoured water for 3 days – either sugar-free or regular – is it likely that the product might disappear very soon?

I have made work into a 5-day-a-week game. I am meeting people I would normally never have the opportunity to meet. Many are students from Goa, or Mums from Poland, or hard-working Tesco professionals who never thought of their job as important. No, we are not the NHS frontline, those fantastic people doing dangerous and, yes, literally heroic work for the sick, but there is a point to what we are doing.

And it gives me a reason to be engaged with the world. I still go out for a run or a bike ride most days, I need to keep fit and sane and I so miss playing football. I can’t easily act, but at least I can sing around the house. My DIY projects all seem far more interesting than before. I have watched lots of music online and chat a lot with friends. I am still cooking for myself, though I really miss people to cook for. I am being paid so much less, but it covers my bills and I can’t spend anything more anyway. Like everyone I miss hugs, I miss social get-togethers and all the things we hope will come back in the future.

Now is a time to consider as well, what will I do when the ‘war’ is over? I probably will do some more marketing and I know that I am missing acting and I want to do much more. But are there other things I should enjoy in my life? Surely that is what we must learn from this experience. Life is short and valuable. Let’s do as much as we can to make us smile. That also means caring for those around us and appreciating the company and lives of others. This is a grim situation, but I wish us all well and the best possible outcome. Keep safe.

Swindon Link is calling on its readers to write to us about their experiences for our campaign called 'Voices from The Coronavirus'. The idea is that we can share our experiences underlining that none of us are alone.

We want to hear from you from whatever walk of life you come from to hear how you are dealing with this new reality. Everybody has a story to share from keyworkers to teenagers. It doesn't matter what your writing ability is, the whole point of this is to make sure every voice is heard so that people don't feel that they are battling this alone. We will try to publish your story on our website no matter who you are.

All you have to do is write to us with your experiences to [email protected]. Please make sure that you send a picture of yourself to go with the piece and try and keep it under 500 words. Please also include some basic details about yourself. For more details press here

And for previous entries into our Voices from The Coronavirus series press here