So, the weeks slip by, ‘hell’ retreats into a memory and the days gradually shorten as autumn makes its presence known.

While lying in bed one Sunday morning, I got a call at 7.35 am asking was I free to work?  An hour and a half later, I found myself standing outside a college close to where I live and spent the day working as a receptionist looking after candidates as they arrived to take their English tests.  I even bumped into someone I knew on my first day.

The first shift led into quite a few shifts in the weeks leading up to Christmas but the more shifts that I did, the more I discovered there were rules, and there were rules and then there were yet more rules until one day, I discovered such as thing as chair etiquette which meant that students could only sit on certain chairs and that was the final straw.  It was all just way too ridiculous.

When I wasn’t working at the College, I wrote numerous cards for a shop’s Christmas campaign.  In November and December, I got to invigilate some exams face-to-face in Central London.  I cycled there and back through the eerie quiet of London enjoying the magic of the lonely Christmas decorations.

There was no doubt that compared to the first lockdown, this one just flew by.  The added highlight of watching Oti Mabuse and Bill Bailey’s dance routines every Saturday night on Strictly Come Dancing was just pure heaven.