As we wind down for the summer break I'd like to thank all Forum members for your participation this year. Activity has been steady and some good discussions have been had. I hope you've found them useful - including the 'live' Q&A sessions we ran during lockdown, and again more recently.

They say 2020 is the year we all wish to forget, but of course it'll be the year we remember. Among other things, I have learned to be grateful for the technology that allowed me to work from home but that I much prefer the collegiality of the office.

Covid has been tough, but each time we speak to our eldest daughter, living with her husband in a tiny flat in London, I realise how fortunate we have been. They hope to visit friends on the other side of the city on Christmas day, regulations permitting. If they make it, it will be the first time they'll have been in someone else's house since February.

(Shameless plug: her husband's narrative history of the 1915 Armenian genocide, and Palestine-based ANZAC troops' witnessing of the aftermath, has just been published. It is a gripping story, if you like that sort of thing.)

Finally, can I suggest you take two or three minutes to write a brief paragraph in response to one or more of the three Reader Feedback questions from the latest issue of Safeguard. Respondents will go into the draw to the new book The Practice of Learning Teams (cover image attached - thanks to @Brent Sutton for supplying 3 copies to give away as prizes)

Here's to 2021!