Vaccine hope after year of worry, sorrow and heroes
THIS is a time to look back on the year gone and forward to the one to come. It’s just a shame we can’t flick a time switch, return to January, blank the pandemic and regain all those lost hours spent trying to get a grocery home delivery slot during the first lockdown when all those with an apocalyptic sense of siege bought up all the toilet rolls. We may have been going to hell in a handbasket but at least they would have plenty of bog roll.
It has been a year when the good guys wore masks like Zorro and those who didn’t became pariahs of society, although no one dared tell them to their face when out shopping for fear of being hit with abuse or, if in the frozen food aisle, an oven ready chicken.
It’s been a strange 10 months with the world gripped by growing panic, the diversions of the mad rantings of Donald Trump, and Brexit negotiations that went, as predicted, to the wire, as if they had been agreed six months in advance but were allowed to drag on for dramatic effect.
The past year has been many things to many people: a hardship, an inconvenience, a chance to work in pyjamas, living through a period of history that has become particularly tedious, lonely and the heroism of essential workers.
A time of great gaffes, of Dominic Cummings proving his buffoonery and turning Barnard Castle into a day trip attraction, of the selfishness of people who wanted to party or pack beaches when the risks were high and well known, of great kindness by ordinary folk, of Marcus Rashford changing Government policy, of the thousands of fund raisers led by centenarian Captain Tom, who personally raised more than £30m for NHS charities and whose small steps for mankind lifted the human spirit in us all.
It has been a time of worry when friends and people we know were infected with Covid, and great sorrow for those who died from it – Bob, you will never be forgotten – and a time for immense gratitude for the service and self sacrifice of the men and women of the NHS.
Now that vaccines have been unleashed, let us hope the worst could soon be over and life may get back to something resembling normality in the year to come.
Let us hope the worst could soon be over and
life may get back to something resembling normality in the
year to come.