Yes or no?

 Yes or No?

So, is this promised doorway to normality open or ajar? Are we "opening up" or is it yet another "here we go again" moment?

As I type I am listening to Boris Johnson's hastily arranged press conference,  reassuring us that the UKs planned phrased opening from May 17th will not be affected by the rise of the so called Indian Variant now sweeping through parts of the country. 

Um. We've been here before. Everyone remembers Boris playing happy Santa only to turn into the Grinch who stole Christmas just days before Dec 25th. Playing God to feel good in the face of science is a dangerous game.

Boris hates giving bad news. Frankly Boris hates most things, work, honesty, truth, loyalty, responsibility....the reason for his Teflon success lies in his ability to proclaim "all will be well" regardless of facts, data and science and keep his fingers crossed behind his back.

Failures in so many fields, providing adequate PPE, providing an adequate Test and Trace app, ignoring warnings until damage is irreversible, Boris is not a popular PM. Yet as recent local elections showed, Labour is less popular. 

Sir Kier Starmer is a waste of time, unable to show a coherent opposition, unable to unite the divided party and unable to appeal to voters. So Boris wins the popular vote again despite everything, sailing high on the winds of his one success, the vaccine rollout.

Boris's current good news hype is that our vaccines will protect us whatever the variant. The current regime is to be speeded up, second doses brought forward from 12 to 8 weeks, young people offered one as soon as possible and faster than the speed of light in cities affected with this variant. 

Let's hope he's right because if he's not, God help us. Again. 

Me, I m not even going there. I don't think I can do this again. The first lockdown last year was hell. Last summer was magical. The autumn was a gradual slow descent back into hell again and this winter has been an absolute nightmare.

Spring and the last few weeks of lockdown easing has brought me back to life. I have my family around me again, my world is full of love and laughter. 

I need to believe that yes, we are past the worst. Because if this a nope, not yet, I and so many more will say no more, not again. Life is for living and I need to live it. 

Writing this blog in 2021 is liberating as I no longer need worry that everything I write is part of a wider picture collated for social policy. This brilliant idea in the first lockdown became tarnished by misuse. Historians and academics such as myself found we were editing honest voices of families, friends, neighbours, strangers, in good faith, only to see our work picked apart by civil servants needing reasons for their actions.

This 2021 version is just me. My life, my year, my opinion. Because we can only understand the present in the context of the past and the future. In years to come researchers will see 2020 blogs only within the wider frame of 2019 and 2021.  

This 2021 diary is for them, for my children, for their children. Because if history tries to recreate Coronavirus as in any way a positive time,  then it will make a mockery of everything we have gone through, Everything we are still going through.  Across the private and the public spheres. The collapse of businesses, industry, the infrastructure of our beloved NHS, as privatisation by the back door has sneaked in during the crisis, the poor getting poorer, the rich getting richer, the sick dying, etc.

I am not a nationalist, I do not care if Britain is doing well. The Indian variant is what happens when one country thinks it can operate alone. This is a global pandemic. Our first world greed is coming back to haunt us.

I m hanging onto optimism because for my sanity I have to. Yes, my vaccines will work. Yes, my family will stay safe, Yes, I can have the summer I have dreamt of because the alternative is beyond me.