Senior Head's Blog: Happy to Chat

May 1st 2020

Dear all

In Monday's assembly, we focused on one of the many noticeable aspects of the current 'lockdown': the fact that people seem to have started talking to each other more. It seems that the more we are forced apart from each other, the more likely we are to say hello to someone we don’t know as we walk past them. Perhaps it’s just a way of acknowledging the social awkwardness of having to navigate around someone at a safe 2m distance, or maybe it’s an instinctive reaction to being told we can’t interact with others that makes us want to do just that. Whatever the reason, I think it’s a really positive consequence of the current situation.

Before COVID-19 even existed, one woman had been very successful in trying to encourage people to be more friendly towards others. One day last year, Allison Owen-Jones, who lives in Cardiff, saw an elderly man sitting on a bench in a busy city centre park. Despite the fact the park was bustling with life - teenagers, parents with prams, people out for a run or taking their dog for a walk - everyone seemed either unwilling or just too busy to stop for a few seconds and say ‘Hello’. According to a survey carried out by Age UK, more than a million older people in this country say they always or often feel lonely. 17% of older people have only one conversation per week with family, friends or neighbours, and many can go much longer than that without actually talking to another human being.

Allison Owen-Jones wanted to do something to help, and she came up with a very simple but effective way of doing so. She placed a laminated sign on a few of the benches in her local park that said ‘Happy to chat bench: sit here if you don’t mind someone stopping to say hello’. That was it. Nothing more than a piece of paper and 15 words, but this small gesture had a huge impact. ‘All of a sudden, you’re not invisible anymore,’ said Ms Owen-Jones. The signs were a big local success and quickly circulated on social media. Before long, similar initiatives began to pop up all over the world. They can now be found in Australia, Switzerland, Canada, the United States and Ukraine, and many other countries. It’s been known for a long time that loneliness is a problem in our society, but perhaps another positive outcome of the lockdown we’re experiencing right now might be that we’ll all engage with this fact a little more.

Most of us have been lucky enough to have close family around us over the past few weeks, but I know that I’ve missed being able to meet friends and family in person. Perhaps, once this is all over, we’ll remember how lonely it can be to have the company of friends, family and neighbours taken away from us, and maybe we’ll emerge as a friendlier and more caring society as a consequence. In the meantime, I encouraged the pupils to consider whether there's a friend or family member whom they haven't spoken to in a while, and if so, to give them a call just to say 'hello'. It might be the only call they've had that day, or that week, and it will almost certainly make their day.

Best wishes

Mr Bond

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