Wow! How the world can change in four weeks.  When I wrote my February blog I was telling you how I was barely going to be at home in March, well reader that is not what happened.  COVID19 has landed and the world has changed.

I wrote a blog about the personal impacts to me and my family and sent it out for comments and one of them was that the Blog was so sad.  This made me realise that it’s my job as author of this blog and Director of Engagement of SRP not to revel in the impact but to highlight the positive and encourage the innovation and solidarity at this unique time. 

So what weird and wonderful things to mention – we have been talking to the kids about what they will be doing now school is not going to be open. We have some work from school but I have agreed to teach them both some science (maybe using an SRP lesson plan or two) and we will be doing some garden observations of the frog spawn.

The nine year old loves having her nails painted so we will do that at the weekend and will get her to do mine while we are at it. There are benefits to no netball, longer nails!  Since writing this blog, we have done our nails - see photo above :).

IRPA15 and SRP’s Annual Conference are both rebooked for 2021, so update your diaries.  IRPA15 will be 18^th to 22^nd January and the SRP Annual Conference will be 16^th to 18^th March.

We did a novel thing this week and had an SRP Council teleconference.  Now, when we meet in person, SRP Council normally lasts from 10:30 until 16:00 with about half an hour for lunch and a couple of short breaks, but we actually managed to do the same amount of discussion and Council business on the phone in just 4.5 hours.  It was an experience to be on a call for that long but we managed and succeeded in making some key decisions for SRP, as we do at every Council meeting.

What else have people been doing differently?  Tweet me a photo.  We should use this unique opportunity to do something you wouldn’t normally do. I have heard parents thinking about teaching their kids some life skills they don’t learn at school. How to change a plug or maintain a car are two examples.  I fancy teaching my two to wash their own clothes but I may be on a hiding to nothing with that one….

While the current situation persists we need to work together in our communities (and I think of SRP as a community) to keep each other well, mentally as well as physically.  So if you find yourself at a loose end, why not come up with a new suggestion for an SRP Outreach activity or write an abstract on your most recent project for a future conference?  Or you could do what I am going to and apply for my CRadP using the new forms and procedure.  I know I should have done it before, but I haven’t, plenty of excuses and no real reason, but at least then I can say something positive came out of 2020, and have some new letters after my name (hopefully).

You can get in touch on the usual details.

Jennifer Humphries  

SRP Director of Engagement

Twitter - @jenkhumphries

Email - Engagement@srp-uk.org