Getting bleaker...

January is always a bleak month for so many in the best of times as the costs of all that Christmas revelling begins to come home to roost on credit card statements that need to be paid. This year those bills may be lighter but the death toll from the pandemic continues to weigh heavily on all our minds.

There is, however, some light creeping into this landscape in the form of the Covid vaccine which has begun to be rolled out across the UK in increasing numbers from today. We are all keeping our fingers crossed that this so called “arms race” progresses without any serious hitches.

Today our daughter timetabled us to assist with locked down home schooling .While she is busy teaching her secondary classes from home and her husband leading his primary pupils at school, we and their other grandparents, are helping out remotely. Luckily we had no glitches that afflicted Microsoft Teams nationally today, and all went very smoothly thanks principally to our 8 year old grandson who is already a technical whizz!

We all take this technology for granted now but it was totally unthinkable to have linked in this way when I was 8 years old!