Richard Douglas

Back in August I started writing about the situation surrounding Covid 19 and never finished. I wrote: The country has been creaking to life for over a month now but is still far from normal. Here in Manchester we've had new restrictions in place for a couple of weeks meaning two households aren't allowed to come together either at home or in a public building. Some venues are only just opening – theatres for example – but are doing so with all manner of precautions and restrictions in place. We ate at a restaurant for the first time the week before last – Croma our regular haunt – which was nice but again a weird experience. The staff, many of which we know, were all in masks; we weren't supposed to be with someone who wasn't in our household so we said that our guest was a lodger; and tables had been removed. We'd been to a pub a couple of weeks before that.

In January 2020 I decided I wanted to lose some weight so I fired up an app on my phone, began religiously recording every calorie I consumed and made an effort to have a deficit of about 500 calories a day from the 2,500 recommended limit. It was miserable.

"Okay honey, so, when you hear your name, walk across the stage, the hostess will talk to you, then get into the shower, pull the handle up and the water will come on," he explained. "Make sure you're good and wet all over then get out of the shower, walk to the middle of the stage and dance your ass off!"

I've started avoiding the news. The hysteria this week over a certain government adviser has reached such a frenzy that I can't bear it any longer. Thankfully I'd booked the week off work and as the weather has been glorious I've been able to spend a lot of time outside in the garden.

I wish I'd have been one of those children that excelled at school, or even enjoyed it. As it turned out I was destined to mediocrity.

My childhood was one long string of parties. Trouble is they were my mother's parties and as she was a 1980s housewife living in suburban Oldham they weren't the kind of social events you or I would think of now.