A Little Of What You've Got Does You Good

Normality, or what can pass for it, now seems is seeping back into our lives. Two weeks ago we had a little Tuesday night gin party of six people to celebrate that we can meet up out of doors. It was a delight, although by the time we’d chatted to people for a couple of hours- something with which we have become unfamiliar, we were both exhausted, and flopped in front of the television.

I had a bit of a medical MOT this week trying to fit in the dental hygienist, a blood test, and the visit for a hearing test all before the shops open tomorrow. We can all crowd into Primark tomorrow, but we have to stay outside in a pub garden and can’t even pop inside to pay. I know. Don’t tell me. We are following the science. Although one has to ask “What science?”

The television seems overburdened with scientists. From Lorraine to Pointless, every programme seems to have their pet expert. Bungling Boris and his band of inept outlaws can listen to whichever one lets them do what they want to do - or the wrong thing, as it’s more often known.

Pictures of bulging high streets will nudge aside relentless memories of the Duke of Edinburgh tomorrow, no doubt. It’s great for retail, and for small shops in particular, but let’s just hope it’s as good for keeping the figures down and for backing up the work of the remarkable vaccination programme. A programme on some form of hold now till the end of the month, with only second doses being administered.

I’m going out for a meeting tomorrow, though I’ll try not to get too excited. It is in Woking, after all. On my last visit to Woking, a couple of years ago, I came back with chicken pox, so it will be masked and full hazmat suit for my production meeting and my Woking Costa visit. Rich is off to his office in Birmingham, which also feels good as business is clawing its way back. Not back to normal, but just back into existence.

We’re resigned to lots of little Staycations this year. Two booked at the moment, and at least one more to come. Evidently staycation amalgamates the words “Stay” and “Altercation” meaning that families are just staying in Britain to have their holiday rows.

This time last year we were rushing onto planes and into shops and thinking it was all over. ‘We will crowd on the beaches, we will crowd in the streets’ as Boris’s aspirational hero might have said. If we have learnt anything from the past year, surely it is to be grateful for small things. For brief victories. For the achievable objectives. And perhaps now more than ever, rather than complaining we can’t get on an overbooked Ryanair flight to an airport seventy miles from civilisation, we should rejoice in what we can do.

Time to cherish what we have, rather than long for what we had

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