EARLIER this week, there was the most amazing day all round for the Isle of Wight.

For the first time in more than a year there were no new Covid cases reported, no new admissions into hospital due to Covid and no deaths due to Covid.

I feel, at last the buds of hope developing and the glimpse of a light at the end of this tunnel.

How wonderful it will be to be able to see and hug people. Zoom is great, but as a friend said, it’s like seeing each other with a condom on, and I know exactly what they mean.

The term ‘essential workers’ has come to mean a whole new thing to us as a society.

Rather than those working in emergency services and medical people, how many people realised that without those working, in many cases for minimum wage, on the supermarket floor and behind the scenes, cleaners, cooks, drivers, sewerage workers, warehouse staff, farmers, carers, volunteers, and hundreds of other roles silently being carried out without fanfare, are the very roles that are essential to keep us alive, fed, watered, clean and safe?

If every politician had been whisked away by a magic genie, how much difference would that have made to our daily lives?

The politicians need us a whole lot more than we need them that’s for sure.

And we need each other a whole lot more than we need those who skim off the cream financially and tell the poor that they aren’t working hard enough…

However there are so many rabbit holes we could disappear down with all that has been happening since the pandemic hit and I want to celebrate the good news.

We’ve all had enough of the other kind.

The vaccination centres are up, sprinting and doing a fabulous job.

Every single person I know, wherever they have been, have said how well it was organised, from the volunteers helping people park, to the cheerfulness of the staff who run the place.

We are vaccinating so efficiently, all the vulnerable to the over 60s have had their first dose, with 76 per cent of the over 50s having had their first vaccination as well.

And the difference is so apparent. To have zero new cases, zero new admissions and zero deaths yesterday was a fantasy a year ago.

If the vaccination does what it says on the box, and means that even if someone catches Covid it will be a mild case, we have cracked it.

It’s been a tough year. The toughest in my lifetime as a country/world. We have lost people and not seen other precious ones for over a year. But now we have real hope that we can be part of each other’s lives again. Priceless.

And the sun is shining!