Lyn Newton LRPS

A Word in Your Ear 2020

And so, 2020, on your watch, life changes over night - a new normality evolves. Loss of human touch, masked faces, neighbours avoiding each other in the street. Restrictions in movement. Fear as the rising death toll is intoned each day.

And yet, 2020, despite all of that, you have given us a challenge - a chance to show our mettle, to go out and discover something different and worthwhile in the mess that is your year.

Marcel Proust talks of a voyage of discovery which consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. So, confined to my local area I set myself a challenge - go out, with my new eyes, onto the nearby beach and see it as I have never seen it before.

2020, you are a year I do not want to see again, and although, you have passed, you will remain forever in the history books of the world. But what you did, for which we can be grateful, is force us to strip back all the unnecessary detritus and depend on our human resources of fortitude, resilience and creativity. A chance to take stock and re-evaluate. So begrudgingly, I thank you.