Wet January

The pandemic entered its new chapter with gusto this month as vaccinations became the daily headline news. As January ends, there are the most tentative of signs that numbers are beginning to drop, certainly in terms of cases, but daily deaths remain high and everyone took stock as the United Kingdom’s total number of deaths ticked over into six figures. The decline in numbers is expected to be slow, with the expectation being that those numbers need to be much, much lower (perhaps 10% of what they are today) before restrictions are eased in such a way to allow a semblance of normal life to continue.

A winter lockdown has been particularly hard, stuck inside with incessant cold and rainy weather hitting the country. We were impacted further here when a flash flood caused by Storm Christoph took out half the floors in our bungalow. We’re still drying the ground out and I have moved onto the sofa bed until such a time as we can get new flooring down! Warmer and dryer weather cannot come soon enough, but I fear February will be much like January, in terms of temperature at least.

On the plus side, my part-time job for Edge Hill University has kept me pretty busy, even though work is now fully remote. Much of January involved looking over recorded assessments and marking essays, very much a new venture for me! It was good to have the spare hours available to consider each submission, as I expected this to be slow-going. The next semester is now underway, which includes helping the 3rd years with a performance portfolio and a separate practical dissertation, as well as helping out on a 1st year songwriting course. The hope is that we can be back on campus at the same time that schools reopen, but in the meantime at least all this work can be done satisfactorally online - as long as the broadband holds up!

I hope everyone is hanging in there. Keep looking forward to the spring, and I will see you in a theatre before we even know it.