What a journey......

Tomorrow we celebrate and I mean celebrate in the loose sense of the word 21 years of being at the Weston Cross. It’s been a rollercoaster of a journey with lot of bumps along the way! I can remember so vividly the day we entered the pub, (I was pregnant with Jack at the time) we’ve had some great times, some sad times, we’ve gained some amazing friends and lost some truly amazing people along the way, we’ve lived through the ‘ ‘foot and mouth outbreak of 2001, we’ve celebrated the queen’s golden, diamond and sapphire jubilees of 2002 and 2012 and 2017 we’ve worked and survived a recession, we’ve celebrated our own milestone birthdays with you all but this year will be a quiet one for us!!!!! We’ll be thinking of you all when we have a gin or two (well maybe a few more) when we raise our glasses tomorrow to celebrate another year.

As we enter another month of lockdown I thought I’d update you all on the events of the last few weeks....

Work has been a blessing. I’m conscious of how lucky I am to be able to keep working from home and that I’ve got something normal to do for a few hours a day. The support we have received from our local community has been incredible and for that I am truly grateful to each and everyone of you for keeping us going through the dark times. I can’t lie this latest lockdown has been a struggle and talking to friends and family I am not alone. I have found I’ve lacked the motivation and enthusiasm of the previous lockdown. Getting up in the mornings and getting going has been difficult, the mornings are so dreary and the weather has been rubbish. It hardly inspires you to even get out of bed!!!

We received a little bit of good news last week regarding vaccination. Lesley and Graham (mum and dad) have been invited to receive theirs this week-so that caused a bit of excitement amongst the family. When all this first started in early 2020 I barely knew anyone suffering from COVID-19 but as this has progressed I certainly know a lot more people who have lost their homes, lost their business, lost their freedom and lost their lives. COVID has touched so many families in so many ways- even in our own family we have lost people to COVID and been unable to mourn their passing and celebrate their lives in ways they deserve but I am aware we are not alone in feeling this.

The work on replacing the roof finally finished today....Yippee. It’s been a long, noisy and disrupting job. The scaffolding went up in mid December and they removed the slates from the front of the roof but unfortunately work was halted due to bad weather and a Christmas holiday. We started New Year’s Eve with “NO LIGHTS” upstairs and on further inspection the covering on the roof had failed and water had leaked onto the lighting circuit in the loft space and caused a fire!!! It was a frantic phone call to our local electrician ‘Connor‘ and all was sorted in a matter of half an hour, thank heavens he lives locally and was working New year. So special thanks go to Connor and if you need his number we have it on speed dial!!!!. Work resumed on the 4th of Jan and continued through the winds, rain, snow and an odd sunny day. Great progress has been made and as I write we are just waiting for the scaffolding to be taken down and a few odd jobs to be done before it can be signed off as completed.

Jack is still on furlough with his job at Jet2 and they’ve been keeping him busy with training for when they finally are permitted to fly. Although he has moved base so will no longer be based at Birmingham he is starting at Bristol so I know he’s excited and raring to start there!!! Paul has worked throughout lockdown both in his day job and helping me with takeaways in the evenings here, I think he is longing for a return to “normal” so he can have a rest in the evenings!!!! Lesley has taken up a new hobby.......knitting. All I can hear whilst watching t,v is the clicking of the needles but boy is she fast at it. She’s made a few little jumpers for a baby of a former worker and has made some brilliant teddies- the grandkids have pointed out that at the ages of 25, 23, 20 and 16 that they may be a ltttle too old for teddies! Graham well where do I start.... he’s been keeping up to date with the football on the t.v, he’s done the payroll for me, and he taking to cycling............ yes indoor cycling on an exercise bike. It is a sight to be seen. I tried to take a sneeky photo but to date have been unsuccessful. The rest of the extended family have been busy in their day jobs and we haven’t seen them since Christmas and are now really missing them.

Based on what’s happened in the rest of the world, I am hoping much of life will be back to normal by late summer with schools reopening, people back in their workplace and shops and businesses reopened. But I don’t believe life will ever be the same again. It will take time for some very ordinary things to feel normal again: meeting a friend for a coffee, kissing someone hello, even shaking hands. It will take a long time for the NHS to catch up,

But I also hope and believe that some things will change for the better. I hope we’ll appreciate frontline NHS staff more. I hope we’ll see more kindness generally and a willingness to adapt and offer help. How long that lasts will be up to us.....

Take care, stay safe and hopefully we will see you all soon.

Kerry xxxx