Retired: Margaret

Mary is a widow in her eighties. She lives in a small bungalow with her Havanese dog and very limited space on the edge of a large village.

Scroll down to read all the ways localnet impacts her life or click on a bullet point below to jump to the item that most interests you.

Morning Lie-in

Margaret has no reason to get up early now and prefers to lie in so he has opted out of the morning delivery round altogether. Before localnet, there was no way to opt out of the milkman, the paper boy or the post round. These used to happen at 6.30, 7.30 and 8.30 and for every single one of them, her dog, Miggie would bark and bark and bark - waking up not just Margaret but her neighbours too.

Now, all is peaceful and she can lie in till mid-morning.

Sharing Plants

If the weather’s fine, Margaret will spend the rest of the morning in her greenhouse or pottering about the garden. She loves growing vegetables and flowers and is delighted that she can now share seedlings with other gardeners around the town really easily and at next to no cost.

Meals on Wheels

She now finds it difficult to cook a proper meal and used to rely on “meals on wheels” for a hot lunch. This is now provided by the nice localnet team who serve her village. Sometime around 1pm she’ll get a knock at the door and the delivery man will be there with her post, a hot lunch and any groceries she ordered the day before.

Groceries

Margaret doesn’t have an internet connection so she simply tells today’s delivery person – all of whom she knows well – what she needs. If she wants some groceries she can just hand him a list of items as they know what her favourite brands of everything are already. Her writing’s a bit erratic now and her eyesight’s going but she’s been given a little pad of pre-printed lists in special large type with all her regular items on so she just needs to tick the boxes and hand the slip to the driver. She typically sits down and orders groceries once a week but if she ever runs out of something she knows she can get it the next day – or if it’s urgent he can even ask for it to be delivered that evening. It's a lot easier now to order enough for one than it used to be. She doesn't have to take a whole packet of food designed for four so her diet is more varied than before and much less is wasted. This in turn helps her pension go quite a bit further.

On the days she gets a box of groceries he’ll normally hand back the previous delivery box – which he’ll have been using to hold the recyclable waste as he finishes things. He could hand it back daily but there’s not a lot in it so usually changes it once or twice a week. He tries to remember to take it and the WasteBox out to the front door before the delivery arrives to save them time.

Selling Produce

When her vegetables start to crop, Margaret tells the driver what she’s got too much of. It depends what’s cropping as to whether she lets them know what she’s already picked or what she could harvest – say a half dozen large cauliflowers and twenty beetroot – in which case she’ll wait till the driver gives her a box with a label in it telling her what has been ordered. She fills the box and puts it in the DeliveryCabinet by the front door for the driver to pick up the next time he’s passing – usually that evening.

Other times, she’ll just harvest what she can and put any she doesn’t want herself in a box to be picked up. Most times it all gets sold but not always. It’s still better than letting it all go to waste as she used to though. She gets a good price for her vegetables and the extra money comes in handy at Christmas

Just Being There Every Day

The delivery chaps don’t hang around long most days but Margaret always has a few words with them on their less busy rounds - late morning and mid-afternoon. It's almost as if they've been told to set aside five minutes a day on their round to have a chat and check she's alright (actually, they have - and they all enjoy the break and talking to the people on their short round - many of whom they now count as friends). Once a week or so they'll even stop for a cup of tea or a stroll in the garden to see what she's growing.

Margaret also enjoys their stops, however brief and feels a lot safer knowing that if he did have a problem they would notice and alert someone for her within hours.

A Lift into the Village or to a Friend's

Margaret’s hips have seen better days so she doesn’t walk very far now but every three or four days she’ll take a seat in the front of the OmniVan – usually on days when her friend Steve is driving. She doesn't like sitting on the little fold-down seats in the back. The ones in the front are much more comfortable and it does say “reserved for the elderly or disabled” on them so she feels perfectly justified. The delivery runs she tends to travel on are quite slow as Steve is delivering and collecting as they go but they're much less busy than the morning and evening runs where the vans go straight to or from the LocalHub and only collect and deliver in the opposite direction.

She has been known to get on the OmniVan going the other way – to her friend Bob’s house on the other side of town.  Most trips though, she meets up with friends, has a coffee and a cake and a chat or browses through the selection of books at the LocalHub's library. If she gets engrossed in one, she’ll have them swipe it across their scanner and bring it home. It goes back in one of the boxes when she’s finished it – and the service is completely free.

Safe Storage for her Heirlooms

Even though she lives in a Neighbourhood Watch area, Margaret feels a lot safer now than she did before localnet arrived. She's confident that people who she knows and who really care about their local “patch” are visiting every corner of it several times a day. They've not only reduced vandalism and theft, they've also been the first to spot and report gas leaks, water leaks, broken fences where livestock are in danger and so on.

Alongside the Neighbourhood Watch sticker in her front window, Margaret now also displays a “No Valuables Kept Here” sticker she got when she put the bulk of her jewellery and silver heirlooms into secure storage in the localnet. She's fairly hopeful that the local criminals are not stupid enough to risk breaking in when they'll not find anything worth taking.

Opening up the Guest Bedroom

Having down-sized from a much larger house, Margaret has already sold off a lot of her excess furniture but she's reluctant to let a lot of the smaller things go as she thinks her children would like to have them in time. The house was very cluttered and the small bedroom on one corner was so full of stuff that she was embarrassed to offer it as a guest bedroom. She noticed how cost effective localnet storage could be, and that they claim to control moths, temperature and humidity better than she has ever managed to. So, over the space of a month or so she has packed about twenty  OmniBoxes and put them into storage. She knows she won't need any of this stuff at less than a few days' notice so she was able to go for the cheapest storage option. This does mean it could take 48 hours to get a box back so she has one box on 24 hour return which she keeps the stuff in that she might just possibly need in a hurry.

Having opened up the spare room, she's already had friends to stay who have come from the other side of the county (using localnet vans to get them to their LocalHub then the bus to hers where she met them - again by hopping on the OmniVan.)

Medication and Home Treatment

Along with her daily paper, Margaret also gets her medication in the box each day – which helps to remind her to take the several different pills she’s on. Once a week, one of two qualified nurses visits on a special delivery round and takes her blood pressure and does some other tests. This saves her having to travel to the clinic in the neighbouring town.

Audio Books and DVD Rental

Margaret struggles to read normal books now but really enjoys listening to a good book on her CD player. She also has a standing order of two DVDs as well and when he’s watched one he just pops it back in the box and another one appears in its place the next day.

All in All...

Margaret doesn't have to worry about getting to the shops or the chemist like she used to. She's enjoying her gardening more, seeing more of her friends and has made some wonderful new friends among the localnet delivery team who genuinely seem to care about her wellbeing.

Benefits