LOOSEN THE PURSE STRINGS AND HELP ‘LUCKY’ COUNTRY

SO it’s time even we here in the Lucky Country, I know Horne was being ironic in the title of his book, need to start taking the conoravirus seriously.

I fall in to the highly venerable category but refuse to play the sick little old man card i.e. a life of absolute entitlement. Nor will I be reduced to squabbling over toilet rolls. If nothing else, I hope to have my dignity intact when the virus is eventually conquered.

Personal gripes off my chest, I am actually writing about our Geelong op shops. I love them for movies and books but my palliative care worker has particularly identified keeping op shops outside my 1.5m personal selfisolation zone. So, no op shop visits for a while.

St Vinnies have suspended their extensive home visitation program because most volunteer visitors are 70+ and so are also highly venerable. (The malapropisms are intentional.)

So both sides of the counter, so to speak, are are shuffling on the back foot. Even so, material aid still needs distribution to battlers, kids still need their breakfast programs, refugees still need, well, everything really, and so it goes.

This all takes money. Can I plead with the good people of Geelong to get onto the net, avoid the “delete virus button” as I suspect it will prove pretty useless, and donate what they are able to, please.

Farmers still need to rebuild after fires and those in the Queensland Gulf and other areas are still bucketing floodwaters. Organisations like St Vinnies, for example, are best set up to help but only if we can all chip in a bit as well.

God bless.

Rev Allan Ansell, Belmont