Trans truth Our journeys
14-hour days delivering parcels for Amazon and, when he’s on an early shift, delivers fast food for Uber Eats straight afterwards, often until 1am, and for £2.99 a drop-off.
“When people started cancelling parties back in March I knew I had to get out and earn money by other means. I was eligible for the government’s self-employment scheme, but my overheads are huge. I pay rent for my workshop and storage unit, parking fees for my trailer and my insurance alone comes to £6,000 a year.”
It’s been a very stressful period for Frankel who now earns in a month what he would often make from one batmitzvah party. “The driving is lonely and my new life has put great pressure on my personal relationships. The other day I was driving back to the depot, just me and my thoughts, and I had a panic attack. I didn’t know who to turn to. I stopped the van and shared my location with my manager. He was sympathetic and told me to take the next day off. But that of course harms me financially and doesn’t really hurt him — he just gives another Amazon driver a day’s work.”
Because money is so tight Frankel and his wife, who’s in the same business, now spend around £45 on their weekly food shop. “It used to be three times that, and I’ve learned not to turn up my nose at frozen veg.” He’s also a regular customer at Sports Direct. “Trousers and t-shirts get caught and ripped on boxes often in this job, and I need to look presentable. In the good old days, I’d spend a couple of hundred quid on a shirt.”
The couple’s student son has also felt the effects of his parents’ reduced circumstances. They used to pay him a weekly allowance and help with his rent. “We had to stop that early on, and I think it’s contributed to him not finishing his degree, which feels awful.”
Paul Craven’s two daughters had already graduated when the virus hit, but if his wife wasn’t in work he says he’d feel even worse than he does. The New Stoke Newington Shul member runs his one-man band social care training agency as a private limited company. “The lights went out on March 23, the day lockdown was announced. After that I didn’t have a single day’s work. After regularly getting three or four days’ work a week, it felt devastating. And the loss of money is just part of the pain. Over the past eight years, I’ve built my company up into something of which I’m proud. I work with local and health authorities and care homes, offering a personalised service that helps people with autism, mental health problems and learning difficulties live better, more autonomous lives. I thrive on doing good work.”
Over the past quarter of a century, Richard Wood has also built his company up into something of which he’s proud. Now the owner of Woody’s, a clothes shop in Whetstone that caters for the barmitzvah market, is just trying to survive. “It’s very difficult running a business when there is no business. Right now, I have 17 party jackets in different shapes and sizes in stock that no one wants to buy. A suit normally sells for sells for £170, now I am hiring them for £50 for Zoom barmitzvahs. That doesn’t even cover the cost of the suit and its cleaning.”
Most of his days are now spent driving his old car —“147,000 miles on the clock and counting” — with jeans and t-shirts piled on the back seat. “I leave them at my customers’ doors. When times are hard, a business has to diversify”
Like Watson, he took a bounceback loan but he’s trying not to use it. He’s spent the business grant money for which his high street shop was eligible on rent and paying his suppliers for next season’s stock.
He hopes that when the shop reopens in December, the first doses of the coronavirus vaccine that was announced on Monday will be in the first stages of roll-out — and his customers in the right frame of mind for buying new clothes.
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