This week my Facebook page showed some photos I posted a year ago of the flowers in my garden. I, like many others, was trying to find ways to fill my time in the first lockdown. Confined to my house because I could not safely walk outside due to cataracts (and considered high risk due to my age) but was lucky enough to have a garden I where I could get fresh air. So I tried to share some of the beauty of spring to those less fortunate than me.
The year progressed with positives and negatives like we all experience but perhaps felt more keenly than at other times. One big loss for me was losing my neighbours that I had known over 50 years. The husband died then the wife had to go into a home as she developed dementia. But the positives came with being allowed to form a social bubble with a dear widowed friend and going out for walks, getting my first cataract operation done and doing some Tenant Involvement work after a long break.
This week it looks like I finally will be getting new neighbours. It will be strange to hear the sounds of a family next door. Will I get on with them? I don't know but hope so. They could be disappointed that they are not living next to a family but a woman on her own. Time will tell.
So a new start, a new beginning - what will this year bring? I already have a new batch of spring flowers - a sight I love - but what after that?
To all fellow Ambassadors and the Tenant Involvement Team - I hope this will be a year that brings you more positives than negatives and take a lesson from Mother Nature that whatever the weather she still manages to put on that wonderful Spring show.
I am sure your new neighbours will be great and embrace you as their kindly older neighbour in time. We had similar here with new neighbours last month moving into a house that a neighbour had lived in for years prior to her death. The house will always feel like hers in a way as was a great friend and neighbour for years. The new family in are nice and getting to know us slowly in the street. Soon see what a friendly bunch we are!
Spring brings new hopes of a better year for us all. No doubt challenges along the way but as flowers and plants blossom so shall we through this annus horribilus ( royal connection!) We all been through.