2021

Small steps towards a new normal this year, although the Covid pandemic shows no signs of going away with another new variant emerging now in November. 

We started the year in lockdown, with Liz, Stephen’s sister being unable to travel to us in London for Christmas as planned. Hazel spent the year still working from home, she did go into LSHTM in Keppel Street a few times, but until January 2022 staff are asked to continue to work from home if they can. This is now feeling like an ending to me, and I am actively exploring the best retirement options, especially as most of my active grants are finishing or finished, and as I write this my last PhD student is within 4.5 months of submission. But I am ready now and looking forward to more freedom.

We are enjoying holidays, even though we have not made it beyond Ireland so far. 

We spent two periods of two weeks each up in North Wales staying with Liz in May and August (during this second visit we celebrated Stephen’s 70th birthday), a weekend with Francisco in Broadstairs in Kent in July, and an incredibly restorative 2 weeks plus in the West of Ireland at the end of October/start of November where heroic efforts from Derek have got the bungalow in Ballyconneely back into working order. That included removal of all the vinyl asbestos floor tiles. Hazel’s task was to help with relining the curtains which continues as a work in progress, especially as curtains for the new French door had to be made from the old kitchen curtains and matching the striped fabric was a nightmare. This wonderful time of gales interspersed with blue sky and sea came after Hazel spent a weekend with Adrienne in Dublin.

 

Family news

Adrienne is still at home, or rather back at home after another hospital admission to St James’ before the summer. Derek has taken on the now greater challenge of managing the carers supplied by an agency who come in pairs for an hour 4 times a day, as well as a live-in carer, who of course has days and weekends off. Hence my visit , David had gone over for a weekend in November, with Hayes hoping to go soon. Adrienne herself has not been so well since catching Covid from a carer in August, with her positive test result on her 95th birthday. Thanks to her two Pfizer Covid vaccinations, she was not very ill and seemed to shake off her infection quite quickly, but she hasn’t recovered her strength and is now just in bed. Of course almost all of the carers stopped coming until she was considered not to be infectious. But she is still at home which is what she wanted.

 

In other family news, Hayes and Ann have relocated from Horsham to Witney in Oxfordshire. Vicky (Hayes’ daughter), her husband Charlie and Ophelia, now 3, also moved house to Wanstead.  Charlie received an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list and went to the Palace in June. Simon (Hayes’ son) has started his PhD in Manchester where Naomi is working as a GP; their daughter Ava was two in October. Lucy (Derek and Sara’s daughter) and her husband Greg, now in Melbourne, had a baby daughter, Molly, on 3 July, and George, Derek and Sara’s son, continues to combine playing cricket for Ireland and his data analysis course in Dublin. David was working on the wards as well as his academic work in Edinburgh, and helped keep us from straying into socialisation with his updates from the Covid frontline. His wife Dervil is now back at work too, their son Ben finished his degree in Pharmacology in Manchester getting an Upper Second, and is now doing his pre-registration year in Yeovil, while Killian continues with his law Masters in Edinburgh. David and Dervil have essentially completed renovating their house in Edinburgh, and have had the life enhancing experience of acquiring two rag doll cats, Taigh and Mimi, one of whom ate a poisonous mushroom in their garden, but survived.

 

Stephen’s sister Liz is still busy walking the footpaths and mountains of North Wales, although she was unlucky to be bitten by a tick while in Achill Island in Ireland when there with a with a friend in October. Luckily she was given antibiotics quickly. She, like us has exploited Covid restrictions to develop her gardening skills, with beans, sweat peas and sunflowers.  Hazel spends a lot of time nurturing things that frequently fail to make it, eaten by slugs and snails, dug up by squirrels or flattened by foxes but it keeps her busy (in her next incarnation she wants a greenhouse). Meanwhile Farleigh Road still needs more love and attention, however the scaffolding is finally up for some roof repairs so we travel hopefully.[Stephens note- we said this last year as well!] We keep wondering why we did so little in the last year, but Hazel does still work full-time and has to relax by watching a lot of tv with Stephen as well as walking round Hackney Downs, constantly trying to identify footwear to keep her feet dry. “Required because my attempts at social distancing and to be in an open space mean I like to walk on the grass, which is almost always wet, whether from rain, frost or dew.”

 

LSHTM news

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has a new Director, Professor Liam Smeeth, who has the challenge of steering LSHTM through these times of Black Lives Matter, equality and diversity, and a period of limited grant funding (at least for what many of us want to work on). But there were plenty of things for Hazel to do including helping decide whether staff and students should travel , is it safe and essential? She is also supporting both staff overseas and MSc students in London, who spent most of their year in London in their own bedrooms. LSHTM is however a resilient institution with exceptional staff, including those frequently advising the Government (who may or may not listen) or informing us via the tv or radio etc, and it will continue to thrive.

 

And thank yous€¦

Thanks to everyone who has stayed in touch, emailed, rung or tried to see us. Somehow these times have meant we have done far less than we would have liked to. We really hope that it will be possible to see more of family and friends next year.

 

In the meantime, we hope you also get through, can have some good experiences and adventures in 2022 and have a good break over Christmas,

 

Awards this year.

 

No hotel beds this year, but we strongly recommend IKEAS’s best, firmest mattresses.

 

Meal deliveries in times of Covid: the award goes to Gugarati Rasoi (www.gugaratirasoi.co.uk) who now deliver marvellous vegetarian Indian meals UK-wide a couple of days a week.

 

Best classical musician. Vikingur Olafsson, the Icelandic pianist, who has a special way of playing Bach as well as the work of other composers.

 

Entertainment awards go to the BBC iPlayer and to the Metropolitan Opera in New York (www.metopera.org), both invaluable.

Edmund de Waal at the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green was lovely, and the gardens and Henry Moore sculptures lovely to see again. However someone in the car park thought our car was a sculpture in progress, and remodelled the door and wing.

No awards to the Royal Academy for its Hockney exhibition, we didn’t take to the art and the number of people without masks did not make it a cultural highlight!

Thanks to everyone who has stayed in touch, emailed, rung or tried to see us. Somehow these times have meant we have done far less than we would have liked to. We really hope that it will be possible to see more of family and friends next year.

 

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