Sacrifice is an almost universal symptom of these coronavirus times.

Across the country, almost everyone is making sacrifices in one way or another.

But sitting on a rocky bank beside an industrial estate in Oswestry in Shropshire, with the occasional interruption of a car horn or growling engine, it’s clear that Ben McKeown’s sacrifice is more profound than most.

For the last five weeks, the lorry driver from Carmarthenshire in Wales has been effectively working and living in a cab barely two metres wide.

His only contact with his three young children is a daily video call and a brief glimpse of them through a window when he returns home to drop off a bag of laundry.

“I saw my partner Nicola but we made sure to keep the two-metre distance,” Mr McKeown says. “It’s a safety thing.”

The decision was taken by Mr McKeown and his partner out of fear that he would bring the coronavirus home after doing long-distance deliveries. Their youngest son was born 10 weeks premature and is just three months old.

“We made a joint decision that it just wasn’t worth the possibility of me infecting Nicola or the kids so we decided I’ll live in the cab,” he says.

He has had a couple of nights’ respite in a family friend’s caravan but otherwise has slept in the cab throughout the tumultuous time since lockdown.

Mr McKeown says he is lucky to have a boss who is very supportive of him and he has made the high-end lorry cab his own.

It is impeccably clean – he is polishing the bumper at the front when I arrive – and inside are many nods to his home, including a duvet with the Welsh dragon and a cushion saying: “Daddy, you’re number one!”

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