When a good friend was interviewed on the radio about creating a film to raise awareness of Long Covid I was shocked to hear her voice. It was weak, fragile, she was struggling to talk and to string her words together. This was not the person I knew.
Caroline is an eloquent, intelligent and articulate hard-working filmmaker who is always busy; a bit of a 90 miles an hour person that I could easily relate to! 
Along with her partner David, I discovered Caroline was among the thousands of hidden Covid sufferers who were not allowed to get a test because when they began with symptoms there were no tests… the government had stopped them. However, months later, their symptoms have still not disappeared and they do not know when they will get back to normal
Caroline and David are self-employed filmmakers, so no work no money, but they have used their skills to create a film ‘Message in a Bottle – Long Covid SOS’ to raise awareness of Long Covid and the Long Haulers who are still fighting Covid months later, fighting for recognition and fighting for treatment.
I messaged Caroline and asked if I could help to raise awareness and floated a freelance article to the Big Issue North – the commission was accepted. I carried out extensive research, obtained data, interviewed a number of people, including a GP who had also had a patient that had been difficult to diagnose and too was a Long Covid sufferer. When I took this photograph of Caroline and David, I was shocked by how weak they both were; not the people I knew at all. This is a very real condition and awareness needs to be raised.
The Big Issue piece was nearly 2,000 words long and it wrote itself. I enjoyed the challenge of researching something I knew little about and the task of finding out and collating all the information.
A feature involves a completely different writing technique and style to a 500-ish page lead in a local newspaper. Being a local news reporter for more than three decades, sometimes I have struggled to write a lengthy feature, to get the tone right and to get away from the ‘hard-edge’ reporting style; I had no such difficulties with this piece.
I then abridged the story to create a shorter more and punchier local paper news article that appeared in the Rossendale Free Press.
Here’s a link to the feature – Long Covid
And the hard-news story – Long Covid
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