Well, as I sit down to write this first blog of 2021, the new year seems more intent on surprising us than the previous, detestable 2020! Last year, from my point of view as a Malvern Decorator, did keep me and my small team busy throughout, and fortunate as we were to have an excellent spring, we were able to concentrate on 2 large exterior painting jobs that took several weeks, and allowed us to work in the open air.
The comparison to working behind a desk in an office is one I have often made with my more regular habitat of climbing ladders and worming my way up through scaffolds. In previous years, I have sometimes longed for that stability of the punchcard job, rather than the somewhat piratical dynamism of running your own enterprise, being tossed about on the waves of chance and doing your level best to trim your sail to to avoid the inclement clouds or catch a breeze when suddenly becalmed. But 2020 put paid to that micro-envy, and difficult though it was, the problems we all faced and the role forced upon me to manage my teams in pandemic circumstances gave me a new perception of management: and just how essential it was to get the best for my staff and to make sure they were as safe as we could make it. It meant supporting them when family members faced an uncertain future, scheduling our work appropriately with more flexibility than before, giving more time for sick leave in case that stomach bug should turn out to be COVID.
So as I write this now, there is no panic for me in 2021. Despite this new variant, lessons learned from 2020 have left me with a reserve that I didn’t know I possessed before. It’s a more pragmatical approach that tells me that Malvern Decorators and the teams under me will be able to weather the coming months until the summer, when some normality will be resumed.
So like you, I eagerly await the return of the swallows and the greening of the boughs. We have to have optimism for 2021 - and no small part of that is that we make ourselves. And what a summer 2021 could be!