Gedney Hill COVID-19 diary to be opened up South Holland-wide
An invitation for people living in a South Holland village to share their experiences of the coronavirus pandemic is to be extended across the area.
Villagers in Gedney Hill have been encouraged to submit poems, photographs, artwork and short pieces of writing to a collection that will be compiled for future generations.
Coun Paul Redgate, chairman of Gedney Hill Parish Council and vice chairman of South Holland District Council, came up with the idea during the first national lockdown in the spring as a way of keeping a permanent record of a "once in a lifetime moment".
So far, up to 40 pieces of work have been collected by Coun Redgate who now hopes that the long winter nights will encourage more people from across South Holland to write down their own accounts of how the pandemic has affected them.
Coun Redgate said: "I've got 30 to 40 pieces of handwritten documentation, mostly poems and short pieces about people's thoughts and feelings.
"But I want to reinvigorate the project and extend it out to the whole of South Holland to get a bigger picture of people's personal experiences of the coronavirus crisis.
"I’m hoping that over the next few months, as winter draws in, people will have time to think and write more.
"For me, the starting place was Gedney Hill but there are so many towns and villages in South Holland and everyone will be going through something slightly different.
"People want to get back to their normal way of living and that's human nature.
"But for now it's about how much they can adjust to the fact that coronavirus is out there."
Coun Redgate's project has been partly inspired by the diaries kept by servicemen and the wider public during World Wars I and II.
But he has also been impressed with the way volunteers in Gedney Hill have helped elderly and vulnerable villagers during lockdown by shopping and collecting prescriptions.
"Some people will be enjoying lockdown, but others may be really struggling because they've lost members of their family or other challenges have been put on them.
"Writing something may give them time to think about how they're getting through it and the idea is, in 100 years' time, people can look back and realise how we lived through this crisis."