Sam Stafford's Blog

As each week of the ‘Great Lockdown’ of 2020 has passed excursions have either been crossed off the kitchen calendar all together or added to a list on the back page of things that need to be added to 2021’s version. Filey at Easter with my family would have been lovely. The Peak District with the families of my university pals over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend would also have been lovely. Travelling down to celebrate my Mum’s birthday, my sister’s birthday and my nieces’ birthdays with them rather than via Zoom would have been lovely too. I was really looking forward to Trent Bridge though. There will be international cricket this summer, but the first test will certainly be behind closed doors and the final test almost certainly will be too. I am reconciled now that all but the last vestiges of hope remain with not spending two days in the upper tier of the Radcliffe Road End in August. In 2015 the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) sought to find England’s ‘Greatest Place’...

Every so often a word enters the public conversation that you have never heard before, but all of sudden is everywhere. A word that captures the zeitgeist. In the summer of 2006 it was metatarsal. In the Autumn of 2019 it was prorogue. In the Spring of 2020 it was furlough.  I was granted a leave of absence from work on 6 April and am still furloughed as I write this at the end of May. Whilst all around key workers are keeping the lights on I am being paid to stay at home.  There have been moments when the enormity of why I am at home and not stuck on a motorway somewhere has escaped me. These moments have, I admit, usually involved a book, a beer and some late afternoon sunshine. For the most part though this has not been an especially relaxing time.  Like all families (apart from those involved in the running of the country) we have had to deal with not going anywhere, which was novel at first, but quickly become a nuisance. Layered on top of that has been ...