'Let's be kinder to each other, use our time and get through this second lockdown'

Here we go again then. To perhaps no great surprise to anyone, the county is again in lockdown with the rest of the country. How will it affect us this time?

Depending on what you read or hear – and depending on where you read it or hear it from – Lockdown 2 is going to be a period of incarceration from whence the nation and economy will struggle to recover.

Much has been made of what will happen – or what won’t – between now and December 2. Many are saying the latest lockdown will actually last longer than that.

Some are saying that it won’t be the last one. Some are saying that Christmas this year is all but lost.

And others are saying that the NHS will collapse under the weight of demand from an exponential rise in Covid-19 cases, the demands placed upon it by the change in the season, colder temperatures and longer, darker nights.

You know what?

ALL of that is supposition, and none of us knows what’s going to happen between now and the start of next month.

The colossal irony of the announcement of Lockdown 2 on the night of Halloween and its beginning on Bonfire Night today (Thursday), won’t have been missed by many.

The investigations by Downing Street into how the media knew pretty much exactly what Boris Johnson was going to announce almost 24 hours before he actually announced it, don’t really amount to an attack on the Houses of Parliament to parallel the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. But one can imagine the verbal explosion inside Number 10 Downing Street which might have gone off late last Friday night.

Certainly the data, which we’re told proved compelling in the lockdown decision, makes for grim reading.

For all that though, just how different will this second period of lockdown be?

I’ve spoken to a fair number of people about it recently and most are at least pragmatic about it.

However long it lasts, people seem better informed, certainly more familiar with how to cope with it and generally philosophical.

The country is going to be in for a long time of paying back its financial debts, but that will apply to every other country touched by the pandemic, and there aren’t many that haven’t been.

Lives and livelihoods in the here and now have to come first; we will all share the burden of paying back in the future.

For myself, since March I’ve been working in a completely different way to get my shows made and to earn a living.

When it first hit, much of the work that I do stopped dead.

Like so many others I’ve had to find new ways of working and new ways to earn that living.

It’s not been easy and it might get harder, but I think I’ve learned to be more resilient and I’m certainly hungry for the work.

The economy here is going to have to be the same and because it’s people who do business with people across the world, maybe the opportunities which help us back on our feet will come, Brexit with a deal or Brexit without one.

I’m also a believer in people helping others out when they need it and since March there’s been a huge amount of that happening.

It’s in our mutual interests to keep calm and carry on, because the sooner we do, the sooner we can see the back of this terrible time we’ve all been witness to.

For now though, let’s all be kind to each other, use

our time and get through this.