Jennifer Hobbs-Roberts is Editor of Vale Life, City Life Cardiff and several other lifestyle and business publications. She lives in Rhoose with her husband Mark, son Jack, and a feisty Jack Russell named Lucy. Jennifer has a forty year career in public relations and publishing. Here she shares her thoughts on lockdown life.
Can you work? Are you having to work right now?
Given the current circumstances, I am not able to meet with clients, but I can liaise with clients over the telephone or via email. As a business, we are currently concentrating on online and social media activity to help promote our clients as best we can.
If you are staying at home, what are you doing to keep yourself occupied? How are you coping?
Walking with Lucy when we can. I cook a lot, and I bake. Luckily, I recently bought a mini trampoline which I am using whilst watching the TV. We also have a mini gym including a treadmill in our garage, so we are able to keep fit this way. We find this helps with our mental state as well as our physical wellbeing. Also, lots of hugs – this helps greatly!
Do you find the situation stressful?
As both my husband and I had the virus back in January, I am less stressed about contracting the virus, but we do have a 21-year-old in our home, so I do stress about keeping him safe. I also have an 83-year-old mum who is self-isolating. I cook for her and take her pies and casseroles and such, but she’s still a worry to me.
On a business level, I worry about our business surviving this. Luckily, we run a very tight ship. We work from home (as we did when we first started the business) and no longer have salespeople to worry about financially and emotionally.
I also worry about our advertisers; will they survive? I console myself with the fact that when this is all over and things get back to some semblance of normality, they will come through this and will need to promote themselves more than ever as people will have been using online services more during this time and may get used to this. There is no better feel good factor than visiting a business, getting greeted by name, and the overall personal buying experience. I do believe that this will be even more appreciated and valued when we’re out the other side and we will be supporting local businesses all the more.
What are your overall thoughts about the pandemic?
It’s a very scary time. One we’ve not experienced before so we’re learning something new every day. It breaks my heart to think that people will have lost someone they love, especially when they’ve had to die alone either in their own home or in hospital. So, so sad.
Photography by Mark Roberts, copyright 2020.
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