...which I'm choosing to publish here, rather than directly in either of the groups - because it's easier to reference back to it.

As of today, the stats are:

We've had quite a few new joiners in the last week - primarily as a result of a leaflet drop to houses not already involved - many thanks for your efforts Claire (23), Jo (29), Lisa (35), Ana (56), Alex (85), Sue (98), Sonal (111). I'm not sure we can do much more than this - if people don't want to be involved in the groups directly it's their right.

I currently have no data recorded for the following house numbers:​

This may be because I've missed people - it's been quite an effort to keep track of households represented in the groups.  If your household is in this list, please let me know so I can update the records.

I started the groups without any real intent beyond thinking it would be good to connect the road up as much as possible. Fairly quickly - and mostly as a result of discussing it with Jo at 29, who works for Volunteer Centre Sutton - I realised that identifying people who might need immediate help was critical.  The most encouraging thing for me is finding that - so far - no-one I've identified as vulnerable in some way is without help.  In every case, someone else has indicated that they are looking after them in some way. And the second most encouraging thing? : The huge number amongst us who indicated (via the survey) that they could help in any number of ways if needed.  If nothing else, I think we should all be conscious of this - and if you are looking after someone's needs and suddenly find yourself unable to do so, please do reach out to one or both of the groups for some cover. There are plenty of people willing to step up :-)

I've collected a lot of data around the residents in the road and exactly what to do with it has given me some headaches (and I'm not alone in that - C19 support groups around the country have wrestled with this problem). The data identifies vulnerable people in our road, which should definitely not be widely shared - and some people might feel that even their names and family numbers shouldn't be accessible to everyone. Equally, I've also had some requests to provide names and house numbers to a few who can't quite remember what their neighbours are called :-)

I propose to do the following:

• I will share the full dataset with a small number of trusted people around the road, so I am not a bottleneck around it.  In the absence of any better approach, I propose to provide read-only access to the volunteers who dropped leaflets last week, who are pretty evenly spread along the road. For the avoidance of doubt, these are the headings under which I have collected data. I have not collected telephone numbers.

• I will publish a list of names / house numbers to the whole group, excluding data relating to people who are not directly involved (and cannot give their consent)

I will not publish anything​ before the end of the week - 17th April.  Please let me know directly if you would like your data removed from either list.

Tim FG (102)
07803 261329
timfg@timfg.com

Wide awake in the small hours, I'm cogitating about how this group is developing and what it exists for. I seeded it four days ago without much thought about it - like many of us, I suspect, staring open-mouthed at what was unfolding on the TV. It seems almost incomprehensible that we are now watching a national lockdown of cities, mass closure of schools and an NHS ramping up for a crisis of unprecedented proportion. For the first time in my life, I am having to explain to my daughters that, this time, I can't say that I am old and wise and have seen this happen before.  Not even close. I am saying that this is something so outside of our experience that we are going to have to collect together as a family and work it out between us. Girls, we are all about to do some growing up.

And I'm sure conversations like these - coloured by the confrontation of something extraordinary - are happening up and down Grosvenor Avenue. This is not just about the chances of catching the flu. Nor a recognition that this is more than flu and that some of our neighbours may become more than just ill - which is much why I created the group last Sunday, to start understanding who was most vulnerable and how we could collect together to help them. This is now about everyone's livelihoods, their ability to work, to hold down a job whilst caring for their children, to live in isolation from their family and friends and to fear the comfort of a reassuring hug. We are all trying to make sense out of a chaos that grows daily, eluding rationalisation and taunting with the fear of the unknown. And with a constant sense of terror that the toilet-paper may run out.

So I thought it would be good to connect us all up.  And I thought it would be better if we all understood just enough about each of our circumstances to recognise what our biggest worries might be.  I started collecting data. And I started worrying about invasion of privacy. I started worrying about holding all this data and who I could release it to.  Some of this data is about people who've told me about themselves; that's fine I think - I can deal with that.  But some is about what people have told me about other people - people who don't even know what I've been told about them.  That doesn't feel so fine.

But I am going to stop worrying about it, because every time someone joins the group anew I'm presented with this same issue. There isn't time to keep seeking consent and these circumstances are not normal. So I'm going to start publishing what I have collected soon - it's no more than what people said in the survey responses and what concerns they have about other people.

The 'front-page' is linked within the WhatsApp Group description - you can always get to it from there. I will add a link to this blog to the front page, along with a link to the spreadsheet data I have been collecting, held on a read-only basis in Dropbox.  Many of you have completed the short survey I created; I will add a link this too. The spreadsheet data captures some basic info about each house - number of people, whether they have some specific vulnerability, the type of help they might be able to offer - most of this is drawn from the survey, augmented by things I have picked up from the group.

I also asked people if they were aware of others who might need support - generally because of age.  There are a number of lines in the sheet where I have identified people in this category, drawn from what people have volunteered in response to this question.  Most of these people were identified more than once - and most are not in the group.  I have decided to publish this data too because, frankly, this is a fundamental reason for starting the group in the first place. I cannot see any likely motivation for anyone to use this data for anything other than positive intent, but clearly it is a little sensitive.  Please do not share it outside the group

I have also removed data relating to who provided some of the third-party info.  It's not important and was generally more than one person in any case. If anyone wants to correct or augment the sheet, please message me directly - or mail me at timfg@timfg.com.  I will continue to build on it, but it's now visible to all.

The sheet 'covers' about half of the road.  People have supported a push to cover as much as possible - and get as many in the group as possible too. I fundamentally agree with this - and will draft a leaflet that can be dropped in the doors of the gaps, alerting people to the group's existence and advising on how to engage.  If we divvy this up between us it should be very easy to do so - I personally could print enough leaflets, but I am sure others have printers, and that might offer the quickest route - I already have a couple of offers.

Finally (sorry for the length of this): I've started this blog-page because messages in WhatsApp often scroll into the ether and some things are better kept current - like this message.  It may be that we collect some info in the coming weeks that deserves to be treated in the same way - I'm very happy to host stuff here for this reason. Please note: Whilst these pages are accessible to all of you - because you have a link to them - they are not indexed or linked from elsewhere - so they cannot be randomly 'found'.  Please do not share the links.