Happy New Year

After months of raiding the dressing up box, I thought I’d opt for plain clothes today!

Thanks to all my Blip family for helping to sustain me during this appalling year. I’ve found it difficult to feel enthusiastic about photography when my natural subjects - other human beings - have been largely absent from my daily life. But it’s been a real comfort to have you out there in the Bliposphere, and to follow your lives whilst all our personal horizons have been so reduced. I hope for better days for all of us in 2021, although I think we’re all going to have to remain careful and vigilant for some time to come, and that some things we took for granted this time last year will never quite return to the way they were.

So... what a year it was, eh? Pestilence on a biblical scale; fire, flood, hunger (including on our own doorsteps - three cheers for my Person of the Year, Marcus Rashford); the continuing reality of climate catastrophe; the ongoing imperative to address historical injustices and their toxic fallout (here’s to the continued impact of Black Lives Matter).

As we enter 2021, I want to thank the battered and beleaguered NHS workforce, who’ve done a Herculean job over these past months (and who are now very much in danger of being taken for granted again); the care home staff and domiciliary care workers who have risked and endured so much; all the key workers and frontline staff who’ve kept us all going; the independent/local businesses who’ve struggled heroically to keep us fed, supplied and entertained, whilst their own futures have been decidedly shaky; the arts and creative sectors which mean so much to so many of us and which have been so badly damaged by the impact of social distancing and public health necessities; the scientists who’ve worked so tirelessly to help us understand what’s going on, what we need to do to address it, and who have developed the vaccines which I dearly hope will help us live to turn things around over the coming months and years.

Thank goodness (to put it mildly) that the world has been spared a second Tr*mp administration. But what a shame that we in this country will have to deal with the self-inflicted injury of Brexit as we try to pick up the pieces of this past year. It’s a double whammy that I still feel passionately we should have avoided. 

On a personal note, I want to send love to my family (I hope I’ll see them as soon as possible, I’ve missed them!), my fabulous friends, my book club compadres, my excellent colleagues (who’ve made working from home more or less bearable!) and everyone who’s kept me going through the miracle of video and digital contact! 

The most unexpected and miraculous thing that’s happened to me this year is that, against all the odds, I’ve begun a new relationship. We’re currently spending New Year together in our support bubble. Perhaps you will meet M in 2021...

I wish you all good health and happier times over the next 12 months. Love to one and all!

Here are The Unthanks with a corker of a New Year song, ‘Tar Barrel in Dale’ https://youtube.com/watch?v=QnHp-em1vec

The words (written by Rachel and Becky Unthank’s dad, George) could hardly be more appropriate at the moment...

“May good fortune be with you
From all sorrows refrain
‘Til that happy time
When we all meet again”