Doing our best is the only option

AND FINALLY

YOU sent such wonderful, encouraging and appreciative emails after last week’s AF it was like being sent flowers.

Thank you so much. Can I just say that while I’ve been trying to respond personally to as many emails as possible I can’t always keep up, and I’m sorry.

Those of you who’ve posted letters may feel everything has disappeared into a black hole and that’s a shame, too.

But since the lockdown your favourite newspaper ( and mine) has been run from the homes of individual editors — a very steep learning curve. So many normal functions have struggled to keep up, and that includes letters. We’ll go on trying to do our best.

That’s one of my favourite phrases at the moment — doing your best. Let’s focus on what it means: an acceptance of imperfection. Parents coping with kids have attempted to be the best home-schoolers they can — only to get bored, frustrated, cross and disappointed.

Couples used to a full working and social lives have tried to adjust to this strange time — and often failed. Those living alone have done their best to cope with technology like Zoom and WhatsApp, only to collapse in tears as it’s all too much.

And it so happens that I’ve watched the Government trying to act, facing a tsunami of criticism, making mistakes (like all governments faced with an unprecedented situation) — and doing their best to bring us all through horrible, worrying times. Does that sound naïve?

Well, it isn’t. I can assure you I’m an experienced, worldweary pragmatist who refuses to embrace the holier-thanthou savagery of so much social media — which sometimes sounds as if it would lynch all Conservative politicians or, shrieking abuse, roll them into a waterway to drown.

Yes, we’re all doing our best: trying and failing and then trying some more. These days an acutely painful hip makes me view hobbling as normal gait. . . onwards, trying your best to stay upright.