Day....shhhhh... ;-)

We should  have spent this weekend in York, sharing accommodation with 6 pals, attending the CAMRA members weekend, AGM and conference, meeting up with countless other friends and exploring some of the mighty fine pubs the city has to offer. The weather has been glorious and it would have been fabulous to have spent the weekend in such a gorgeous location, but sadly it wasn't to be. Oddly enough I haven't really missed the event, but I have missed the people I should have been there with.

In some ways it feels as though we are currently in closer contact with some folk than we ordinarily would be - things like WhatsApp groups are coming into their own, we have a family one with the Devon family, and I'm in a number of others as well, all of which are lively and chatty at the moment - not a substitute for the usual types of social contact we'd have, but great ways to stay in touch none the less. A group of friends are planning on "getting together" for a catch up tomorrow evening on a video chat - although I'm not certain I'll be able to make it work here, our internet signal is not the best and last time we tried to do a video call it really didn't work! We'll see though, it might be that it works better through my iPad than it did on my phone, who knows!  Another thing that has taken off online is "Virtual pubs" - Facebook has several and CAMRA have now launched their own also - the Red OnLion. One of the things we were really concerned about when the severity of the outbreak and the steps needed to counter the risks was that with the closure of the pubs, and the cancellation or postponement of beer festivals it was going to leave a huge tranche of people with pretty much no social life at all - of course since then it has moved on to us ALL having no social life in the traditional sense, but it must still be remembered that there are some people out there who have little day to day contact with others, so these online "meeting places" really are very important for helping people to feel less isolated.

This has been another weekend which hasn't felt so different to normal -and oddly enough we're still finding ourselves struggling to find time for all we want to do. Probably a good thing, I'd say!

Robyn