I've been saying for several months that it'll be a long time before my phone rings with new normal work, as people won't want to commit to potentially spending £20-50k on a party without a very high degree of certainty that they'll be able to go ahead with it without having to cancel and I can't imagine them wanting to hold an event with any form of distancing, so they'll be waiting to see how the next few months progress before doing anything. Some will be quicker than others to proceed, so my gut feeling is that next year will be better than some are expecting, providing there isn't a significant ongoing second spike, but of course I've not got a crystal ball either.

Having a good look at the figures on the BBC site for new confirmed cases across the UK, other than a couple of localised hotspots they appear to be falling quite rapidly now. And when you consider that quite a lot of those being confirmed are in hospitals or care homes, then the figures in the general population are really incredibly low. Obviously we're all aware that the actual figures are probably significantly higher than the number of positive tests, but there's also an increasing level of targeted testing so surely a higher proportion of cases must be being picked up.

I live in a very rural part of Wiltshire where we're being extremely careful about distancing, even though the chances of actually coming into contact with the virus are minimal (the whole of Wiltshire excluding the Swindon area appears to have had a total of 7 confirmed new cases last week). I fully admit I'm being careful not because I'm concerned for my own safety but for 'the greater good' and because it's what we're meant to do.

I'm lucky in that I've got a reasonable cushion, am keeping the costs down as much as I can and am very grateful for the government's help, especially in that I know it could be a long time before my income returns to normal levels, so I'm not worried financially. I've also got a big annual exterior lighting job over Christmas that the customer is still hoping to be able to hold in some format if they can get over budgeting issues so I've got my fingers crossed for that, but I'm not yet putting any effort into risk assessments and Covid secure working practices as I suspect things will change significantly over the next few months as the UK finds it way with dealing with it.

But I really am quite looking forward to finally being able to shake someone's hand again!