First and foremost, I hope you are all as well as can be expected after 15 months of social isolation and lockdowns.
I had my second Covid jab yesterday and whilst I had a dreadful 24 hours after the first one the second one has been very uneventful. The lockdowns and social isolation have meant I've done a lot around the house and garden (but am a little disappointed that it does not seem to have made a huge difference) and I've not been getting out as much. The most visible impacts of that are the weight gain and the hair growth. I have a feeling that the latter will be the easier one to fix and the former will take a lot longer, and a change to many habits that have developed over the last 15 months, before I get back to a pre-pandemic state).
Like all of us I have been trying to keep as busy as possible with a couple of Udemy courses completed, a family tree researched (which has taken some parts back to the 1600's) and eventually a rethink about the RHC70s website. I had been hoping that many of you would have been clearing out attics and garages and unearthing those photos you took in your students days - the ones you hid from your children as you were trying to warn them of the dangers they would be facing in the outside world and how they must behave responsibly - and there was be a flood of new photos for the website. Alas, we've seen a few more but not a deluge. I wait in hope!
The pictures already on the site I've tidied up a bit and hopefully made easier to find. For historical reasons (an excuse that means I cocked some things up years ago and its too late to fix them properly) the way they are organised and presented makes it difficult to find the ones that might inlcude people you remember. I can't make that a lot better but I am putting a layer on top which will hopefully make it easier to navigate your way around and find ones that may be of interest. I will be rolling out the changes over the coming months so you will see a number of differences and if you have any feedback it will be interesting to hear it. I also hope it will be easier to use the site on tablets and mobile phones (they were not very common when the site started) but since I can't test all of these and see how it looks and works if it causes problems please let me know. I will slowly be working my way through the site but who knows how long it may all take.
If you do visit the site then please leave a few comments about how you've fared during lockdown and some indication that you've visited. If you go through the photos then please leave comments about those where you recognise people. Where photos are part of a group then you need to 'join' the group in order to leave comments, but that's a pretty straightforward thing to do (though one of the things I hadn't realised when starting to use the software).
There is still a hope that there will be a reunion next year that John Parker will organise but he will have to take into account where we are at with pandemics and the like and whether it remains a practical proposition.