Bring on the Experts - Please! by Lynne Benton

A senior politician once famously said, “We’ve all had enough of experts!”  I wonder if he still thinks the same, now that most of us are crying out for people who actually know what they’re doing?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an expert is: “a person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area.”  In other words, someone who is very good at his/her job.  Which is surely what we all need at the moment.

If we are ill, the experts we need are medical ones – nurses, doctors, care workers etc – the people who work for the NHS for whom we all turn out and clap on Thursday nights.  It’s been proved over and over again that these heroes are finally being sung (as opposed to unsung) and appreciated as never before.  They are experts in the most important field of all – that of keeping us well and/or making us better during this extremely worrying and difficult time.  What would we do without them risking their lives to keep us all safe? 

Similarly, if anything goes wrong in our houses, our cars, or our lives, we need other experts to sort us out.  But during Lockdown, some of these experts are unavailable, mostly because of the rule that we should all practise Social Distancing at all times (a recommendation by other experts, of course – scientific ones this time, on whom we are all relying heavily at the moment.)

This was brought home to me again last night when my daughter phoned and mentioned that her husband had lost a filling from his tooth.  Of course his dentist is currently unable to treat patients, so recommended buying a special substance online which could be used as a temporary filling.  I don’t think “amateur dentistry” was ever one of my daughter’s ambitions, but in these difficult times we are all having to turn our hands to things we had never expected to do, so her next job is to fill her husband’s tooth, if only temporarily!  So yes, surprising as it may seem to some, we appreciate our dentists too!

Similarly, how many parents ever expected to have to “educate their children at home” for weeks on end?  Given that it is still the teachers who have to plan all the lessons in line with the national curriculum, make them available online and mark the children’s work afterwards, it’s not really “home educating” as such.  However, for many parents it must come as a bit of an eye-opener to discover that children don’t necessarily want to sit quietly and get on with whatever work is set for them, especially if there are several children in the family of different ages.  I’m not underestimating the difficulties parents face here, though as an ex-primary school teacher I shall be quite glad if when this pandemic is all over teachers are rather more appreciated by the general public!  I’m sure there will be a collective sigh of relief from parents all over the country when the experts take over again.

Since this blog is supposed to be about writers and/or writing, I should perhaps mention that I quite appreciate that we writers are among the lucky ones (provided we stay well, of course!)  We are used to spending hours at a time on our own, with only our computers for company, so in that respect Social Distancing isn’t a problem - though many of us may currently also be expected to educate/entertain young children, which is not necessarily conducive to creative thinking.  And of course we are all constantly having to think about food and feeding all the family all the time.  (Keeping younger children entertained is one thing, but keeping teenagers fed is quite another.  It must be infuriating to find that your carefully-planned food for the family's evening meal has been sabotaged by a teenage son who has eaten half of it for a snack!)  Other than that, all we need is our computers to keep functioning, so we don’t need to call in the expert to fix it.  (Though they too will be much appreciated!)  However, in spite of this, we can still write during Lockdown.  Our job will, we hope, still be there when it’s all over, we tell ourselves that “people will always want stories!”, and that agents and publishers have nothing to do at this moment but wait for our manuscripts to land on their (home) desks (!)  So yes, even if we're not actually earning much at the moment from festivals, school visits and the like, as well as our books, we are the lucky ones.

As for other experts – of course we need them, all the time.  We need our internet connection for all those WhatsApp, Zoom and Skype calls with which we can keep in touch with our families.  If our broadband goes down, or is intermittent, we will need to get an expert to fix it as soon as possible.  Similarly if a tap leaks or the boiler goes out, we’ll need an expert, but if we can’t ask them to come into our homes to sort out the problem, what are we expected to do?  At the moment in our house we need an electrician to fix two wall lights that have inexplicably failed, and although we’ve tried everything we can think of, nothing will make them work again.  I know they are not exactly vital, but we really miss them, and we still don’t know how long we will have to wait before we can expect an electrician to come and fix them!  He/she too will be greatly appreciated.

Similarly, hairdressers – if, as is suggested as a possibility, we can start going back to our hairdressers on 1 July, it will be 17 weeks since I was able to get my hair cut!  If I had long hair it wouldn’t be a problem – I could just tie it back.  But my hair is short, and short hair that’s overgrown just looks messy.  Maybe it’s as well that we’re all practising Social Distancing – nobody can see me close up!  So I'm currently missing my hairdresser almost more than I miss my family and best friends.

So I would beg to differ from that ridiculous statement that “we’ve all had enough of experts.”  On the contrary, we need them now more than ever, in all walks of life.   So bring them on please!  Now!  We all appreciate you!

Latest book: The New Baby

website: lynnebenton.com