We are a week into March 2021. This time last year I was preparing for a job in the north of the UK. The work was for about a week and for an audience of 3000 people, and as usual, I would meet some great friends, talented technicians and have an enjoyable week. However, there was a dark and ominous cloud hanging over the event. The news was full about a new virus, recently named Covid-19, that was spreading quickly but we were told that the UK was “well prepared” for any event and that all we had to do was wash our hands thoroughly and stay clean.
Well, the rest, as they say, is history. A week later, around the 20th of March, I was back home having done the event, the stock market had fallen, the WHO had declared the virus a pandemic. We had no idea what was ahead of us. The start of spring this year was wonderful, warm, and sunny. Three days later public gatherings are banned resulting in the whole of the entertainment industry closing down, wiping the calendar clean and for an unknown length of time.
12 months on and we are still closed. One whole long year has passed. We now have a “road map” as it’s called to get us out of lockdown and back to some kind of normality, whatever that might be.
How much longer? Nobody has the first idea. We have been given dates for this to happen, then this, and if we are really good this will happen. I guess we have to be patient just a little bit longer and maybe, just maybe we might get the lights back on and the sound cranked up by the autumn of 2021… Fingers crossed!