At the end of my last blog I compared COVID-19 to the World Wars, but I don’t think we will be playing football in no man’s land with COVID-19 this Christmas.  But I do know the British spirit of finding a way of being together in the face of adversity will be strong this year.

My brother, who lives in Berlin, Germany, is keen to get to the UK for Christmas.  He hasn’t seen my Dad since before lockdown in March, but currently he will need to self-isolate when he gets here and when he gets back.  Completely doable, just need to sort logistics. 

We usually alternate which side of our family we see at Christmas, with a couple of hours with everyone (9 of us) on Boxing day if we are in Cumbria.  But we are currently planning on having everyone at ours for Christmas dinner, which will be a (positive) change.  Mr H and I had our own little freak outs about it – he was worried we didn’t have enough plates and cutlery (we do), whereas I was stressed out that we didn’t have enough chairs (we do).  Under the current restrictions (09/12/20) we will be compliant with the three household rule, my Dad is in our support bubble, and my brother in law is in a bubble with my parents in law, and my brother is isolating to join our household (assuming we get the whole travelling from Germany bit sorted).  I am looking forward to a few hours of noisy madness – thankfully the in laws will be going back to their house to sleep so we won’t be having a full house overnight. 

Have you all seen the SRP Christmas Advent Calendar?  I think it is a really Christmassy way to celebrate our SRP Affiliated Organisations and learn a bit more about them.

Next month will be the IRPA15 Congress, as a hybrid (virtual and physical) event, and the submission deadlines for posters, presentations and papers took me and some of the other SRP authors by surprise.  Luckily, we had enough time to get them all sorted out and submitted by the 15 December deadline but somehow with all the other bits going on (a pandemic, Christmas, work) it nearly slipped through the net. 

I am part of the SRP delegation for IRPA15 which is exciting (probably would be more if I actually got to travel all the way to South Korea) and means I will be involved in the General Assembly on the 14 January.  The IRPA15 Organising Committee are going to use the wonder of technology to run a global meeting on a virtual platform, something we would only have dreamt of 12 months ago.  There are a couple of practice sessions this month which I will definitely be joining to prove all my IT works (or not) and then on the actual day we can deal with the meeting business rather than have to faff with IT. 

The General Assembly is similar to SRP's AGM but for IRPA, so each Associate Society (such as SRP who represent the UK) has a delegation who attend, with the size of the delegation dependant on the number of IRPA members each Associate Society is representing.  It only happens every 4 years and is where IRPA agrees changes to its constitution as well as electing the members of the IRPA Executive for the next term of four years.  This time we have an SRP candidate for election to the Executive, Claire-Louise Chapple who is currently SRP's Honorary Secretary.  I wish I could ask you to vote for her but the Associate Society delegates are the ones who will do the voting.  Good Luck Claire-Louise!

If you are wondering where Pete Bryant’s Christmas message is then keep your eyes peeled on the SRP YouTube channel as he will be doing a Video Blog soon.

I hope you all have a good Christmas and a Happy New Year, 2021 has got to be better than 2020, hasn’t it?

You can get in touch on the usual details.

Jennifer Humphries
SRP Director of Engagement
Twitter - @jenkhumphries
Email - Engagement@srp-uk.org