I don't think I can face trying to write a review of 2021. While I know my year wasn't anything like as bad as some people's, it was a year spent on the brink of total burnout and it seems likely that 2022 will continue along much the same lines. And unless the government bring in further restrictions, in particular around moving university teaching online, it seems likely that I will end up getting covid at some point soon, which I'd much rather not do.

At least this year I was able to spend New Year's Eve at my parents' in Norfolk, thereby avoiding the midnight re-enactment of the Somme that has become the norm in built-up areas. And I'm very glad to have got to spend time with my parents (we more or less isolated for a couple of weeks beforehand, to try to avoid bringing covid with us - by the time we got there on Thursday, neither of us had been in a building other than our house since the previous Wednesday, and that was the Kassam Stadium when I went for my booster. Though my brother's partner has just tested positive having visited them on Tuesday, so we're all hoping that she picked it up at work on Wednesday or Thursday and wasn't incubating it then), though every time we visit them my dad has visibly declined and that's very difficult.

So I'm not feeling at all optimistic about 2022, even by my normal standards of not liking New Year. I do hope that it treats all of you well, though.

My aunt posted a picture of my maternal grandmother as a schoolgirl on Facebook for Mothers' Day, and one of my cousins reposted in on Twitter today.



Another cousin responded that she looked like me, and a third cousin pointed out that she also looked like the second cousin's son. Both of these things are true; there is a very strong resemblance on that side of the family. (It's also where I get the Rack of Doom from, though that one skipped a generation and my mother was spared it.)

Anyway, it was nice to have a little bit of Twitter silliness with some of my cousins, as we mostly communicate via Facebook where things have been a little fraught recently due to political differences and the fact that we all have a tendency to be quite vocal and argumentative about our views (also, Facebook can make it hard to avoid someone's politics as you might do in real life if you knew that you and someone you generally got on with had violently opposing views).