Good evening,

If you think too long about how much life has changed in seven months, it can make you go a little crazy.

Our lives have been consumed by figures and analytics, number of cases, number of hospital admissions, the R number - all of it totally alien to how most of us used to think.

For those of us more at home with words than numbers, that in itself is frightening.

As is the way we now we wait in anticipation (and some horror) as we watch the daily tolls rocket and realise the human suffering that lies behind it all.

It is easy to become disheartened.

Can any of us point to a realistic deadline as to when this virus will no longer hang over us all like a malevolent hand waiting to stretch a pointy finger in our direction?

And that is the problem. If we could see the light at the end of the tunnel, we could cope. Adopt a stiff upper lip and keep going till the end.

But we cannot see the end. So we need to embrace the present, offer each other the vital support we all need at certain times and keep smiling.