Marisa Laycock

A whole year has gone by and most of us may very well be a few pounds heavier.

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to claim that box sets have been a sort of therapy for millions of us during lockdown.

I sit back into my sofa and open a brand-new hardback. I’ve been looking forward to reading Bill Gates’ new book How to avoid a Climate Disaster.

A low and distant winter sun casts a bleak February light over a vast and spacious landscape. Verulamium park is blissfully quiet this morning and life seems to be on pause. We enjoy the space and relative emptiness before the finer weather when it will fill with people again.

Daylight is gradually increasing, and cold grey sleety afternoons are occasionally giving way to pink sunsets. Clusters of porcelain white snowdrops scatter the front lawns reminding us that winter is gradually drawing to a close.

Once the lockdown eases, I get the feeling that alternative therapists are going to be busier than ever.

I love the way millennials walk around town listening to their music on their branded headphones.

I’ve spoken with a few neighbours and understandably many of us are suffering from the January blues right now.

This lockdown doesn’t feel anything like the last two. There are no long springtime walks amidst brightly coloured tulips. The neighbourhood streets are frosty and deserted. There are no wide-open back doors, no pottering about in our gardens, no sunlight pouring through my study window and by 4.30pm I am already drawing the curtains, having a cup of tea and watching the news.

Mr Topsy-Turvy would have felt right at home during 2020! It has been an utterly surreal and baffling leap year when many things were turned on their heads like a president who couldn’t accept that his time in office was up, and a chief political advisor who drove his family from County Durham to Barnard Castle during lockdown just ‘to test his eyesight!’