According to the last two chapters in the Bible, a new heaven and a new earth is on its way.

It had better hurry up. Death is everywhere in the path of a deadly pandemic and we who are left behind are showing no desire to go to heaven.

Give us back ‘our normal’ is on everyone’s lips, almost any normal will do, but please give it back.

The consensus is worldwide. Before COVID-19 arrived, life was good, very good.

This horrible virus has found us out. We had no sense of how utterly self-centred we have become, how greedy, how complaining.

Hospital and care home heroes have changed all that.

We have a new family now, inspired by 100-year-old Captain Tom, clapping with our neighbours for the many front line people who not only proved selfless but have paid the ultimate sacrifice in saving others.

Contentment has been re-defined, at a great cost. If their sacrifice doesn’t change us then nothing will.

When it’s all over, if we still have a job and a place to live, with someone to love and be loved, the new normality won’t be without tears but at least it will bring the embrace of a new contentment.

‘No more tears’ will come sooner or later when the great climate changer from the skies ‘wipes away every tear from our eyes, banishing forever sorrow, pain, tears and death’.

R. Hall

Isel Rd

Cockermouth