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And so we come to the turn of the year. Usually at this point I'd be blogging about goal-setting or somesuch future-focused theme, but I hope you'll understand if I don't dig into those kinds of ideas too much right now. We live in a strange, suspended time when we can see significant hope for some kind of return to safe normality in the next few months, but still have some of the darkest and most difficult days of the pandemic yet to live through between now and then.

So instead I'm sharing some music with you. This video is the outcome of a recording project my chorus undertook with our sister chorus during the autumn, to share with all the friends and organisations we should have been singing to during 2020 under normal circumstances. The arrangement was one from my 8-parter project of the first half of last year, and I wrote about the technical and artistic challenges it entailed back in March.

Looking back, I had absolutely no inkling that we'd record it before we sang it together live. Indeed, that blog post was published the day before the Telfordaires decided to move our rehearsals online.

So, this is a very Janus-like mood I find myself in, looking both back and forwards. And reflecting on all that has happened that we could not have predicted sheds light on why it is hard right now to envisage the future.

Still, I think we are all just as glad to shake the dust of 2020 from our shoes. We have a better idea now of where we are heading, even if the immediate path in front of us remains shrouded in uncertainty. Let us bid the old year Good Night and step forth into the new with the resolution to put music into people's hearts and find the joy in the moments as they go past.