Looking towards a brighter, bus...ier 2021
A new vaccine has begun to be issued and, in the run-up to the festive season, a time that is often characterised with hope and joy, we might just all be able to feel confident about a brighter future waiting for us right around the corner.
And, as ever, the end of one year is a chance for us all to look back.
What lessons did we learn?
What are we grateful for?
What are we glad to see the back of?
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Hide AdThe answer to the third question ought to be fairly obvious if the vaccine pulls us out of the Covid-19 trap.
We can all, I am sure, answer the other questions quite differently.
I certainly learned things about our bus company and also about our people that I never knew before.
I learnt how to ensure that we were more resilient, that we were more agile and also that we were more flexible than ever before.
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Hide AdI learnt how critical buses were felt to be for our nation’s infrastructure and also in our way of life.
I learnt how strange it was to run hundreds of buses that hardly carried any people on them, but I also learnt then how quickly people returned once we reassured everyone we were “Clean, Safe and Ready to Go”, as we continue to say.
I still long to have all our customers back (and more customers besides) so we again can trade commercially at precious little expense to the public purse.
Perhaps most importantly, I also learnt what a positive feeling it was to see our colleagues recognised as the valued, critical, key workers I knew they were all along.
And much of this is what I am grateful for, too.
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Hide AdDespite the terrible hardship we’ve endured, I am grateful to live in a town filled with optimism - as well as its beauty and homely comfort. I am grateful to be surrounded by the incredible people I work with – who just kept calm and who just carried on – and the supportive customers that we have and also the organisations we stand shoulder to shoulder with here in Harrogate.
I write this column while I am sitting beneath a small painting that sits proudly in our living room. It is a painting of a packed crowd exiting the pantomime at Harrogate Theatre (with a busy number 36 bus passing by, of course). It all serves to remind me of the better times that there are to come.
Yes, I admit that I am only an adopted Harrogatonian of a mere six years, but the Christmas panto trip has already become a firm fixture of the family events calendar, and one that we shall miss the most this year.
However, my glass remains half-full believing that this, and many of the things we love, will be back in 2021, for us all to look forward to together – that is including that number 36 bus being nice and busy again too, of course.