Welcome to a zombie new year - that's just like the last

In fact, it feels very much like 2020 has refused to die and staggered zombie-like across the dateline to continue haunting us in 2021.

Everyone had such high hopes that, if we could just grit our teeth and get through until January, things would start to pick up.

But far from improving, it feels like things are getting worse – that we’re all having a horrible sense of deja vu.

On Monday, the Prime Minister announced that we were all going back into national lockdown with even schools now being ordered to close.

It means that, once again, Bramley Towers has become home to temporary classrooms as well as an office block and conference room.

At least we were already prepared for this set up, as we knew secondary school kids would be remotely learning at least for the first two weeks of term.

And in our heart of hearts we had already pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact the kids were unlikely to set foot back in the schoolyard this side of half term.

The fact that primary pupils went back to lessons for a single day – before classrooms were immediately closed again – does not put the Government at the front of the queue when it comes to handing out the best organiser of the year award.

In fact, quite the opposite.

I have a lot of sympathy for ministers dealing with a fast-changing situation, where new mutations of the virus are shifting the goalposts all the time.

There’s also the tightrope that the Government has to walk – between shutting schools to reduce infections and the impact that has on working families who now have to find childcare during lockdown. None of this is easy

But having young kids off for a whole fortnight, sending them in for just one day, before shutting schools again is shambolic

Especially as most parents were expecting it to happen anyway. It’s also not great at preventing the spread of infection either.

But let’s look on the bright side, things can only get better, roll on next year.

Hang on, I’m getting a horrible sense of deja vu.