So here we are again, another March spring and still largely in lockdown. This time, however, real hope is growing as each daffodil pushes itself out of the ground.

Last weekend in 2020, I found myself at Charlton Athletic football ground, on the south side of the Thames, in deepest south east London. There Middlesbrough ended our spring resurgence before it had even begun. Indeed, the season ended in relegation.

That March 7-8 weekend was already scary. Covid-19 was in the air. On March 10, the Cheltenham Festival began, running until the 13th. This caused an immense and early localised spike in infections.

Just nine days after I had been sitting in the sun at the Valley with a cup of tea and a pie watching Charlton lose, the PM announced the worst. On March 16, 2020, all unnecessary contact with other human beings was to end.

Being in the clinically extremely vulnerable category, my London jaunt now seems idiotic, and I was perhaps lucky to get away with it. Having a now lifelong suppressed immune system, I always dodge coughers and sneezers, never touch my face when out with an unwashed hand etc. But even so…

So here we are again precisely a year on, and hope can literally be heard in the air. Anyone living within sound of a primary school, as I do, can hear the sound of (albeit cautious) games in the playground, mums and dads walking past the front door to and from school. We have to start normal life in the almost vaccinated world somewhere, and this is as hopeful a place as any.

Yet we must not forget what this interrupted year has cost our schools. I was talking to an education director this week and they said: “People think schools have been closed, all the teachers staying at home in their pyjamas. This is so untrue.”

They explained that most schools have instead had to provide not one but two education services. The children of key workers, and vulnerable children, have been coming to school anyway. But teachers have also had to provide as much education as they can by Zoom – in essence, a doubling of their workload.

Their hard work has been yet another heroic part of our public sector. I am pretty sure all teachers were out clapping the NHS workers and it will be lovely in due course to give similar thanks to teachers too. Their commitment and industry has been amazing but so has their inventiveness and resourcefulness with how to deliver all this at a time of crisis.

And at the very heart of this drama have been the children, students too. Millions of kids will remember 2020 like previous generations can recall 1966 and 1939. They have had to put up with it all, from the loss of already paid-for university education at one end, to a whole year of primary education and playing sport or learning an instrument lost at the other. Yet in all my discussions with the wonderful parents who have had to bear the brunt, so few complaints. We should be proud as a nation of all of their forbearance.

This weekend in my house we were finally getting rid of our DVD collection, five years after we last owned a DVD player. There was just one from a hundred odd I simply had to retain: the double DVD collector’s edition of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. How many of you can remember that, the surge of pride, from the Queen and James Bond, to the epic celebration of a free NHS?

That was us at our best, before the last few years of utter misery. My eldest son bought me that at Christmas 2012 and I cherish it. It’s on youtube too – maybe have a look? We aren’t half bad when we put our minds to it.