My first thought about the coming year is a feeling of great gratitude to the people who have developed vaccines against covid-19.

My second thought is a similar feeling of gratitude to all the people who are under exceptional pressure and workloads and work so hard in the NHS to look after the sick and the dying.

What will happen next?

What will happen to me?

Last year when the pandemic struck the UK I at first felt very blase about its impact.  Later I felt that the chance that I would catch covid was extremely slim and I wasn’t worried at all. 

The new rapidly spreading covid which emerged just before Christmas doesn’t seem susceptible to control by social distancing, and knowing that hospitals are under extreme pressure, because we have seen vivid scenes of staff under great stress on telly, makes me feel much more unsure about what will happen. Perhaps I might catch covid.

At my age, 78, I don’t anticipate that I have a great many more years to live but for quite some time I’ve thought in terms of having probably another 10 or 20 years. What is scary about covid-19 and this rapidly spreading variation is that if I catch it I may have only a few days of normal consciousness before I become incapable of doing anything. I really am not prepared to die at the moment and I would be extremely annoyed if I did. 

I still have many things to finish, lots of things I want to write about, and I need to clear stuff out of my office, the loft, the garage, and my shed. I need to sort through my files and papers and throw away what is rubbish and save what might just possibly be of interest to someone in the future. I need to close down Saxon Books, my book publishing business, and make arrangements about the copyright of my war poetry anthologies which are still selling. I also have to do my tax return and I would like to decorate the landing and stairs. That’s a minimum.