What a tumultuous week it has been, wouldn’t you agree?

It can sometimes be difficult to see and appreciate the good going on around us, when ‘good’ doesn’t come with a trumpet fanfare.

So I'm hoping to do my bit this week, by using my column to trumpet some of our own good people here in Andover.

You will see I have been busy with my camera photographing the many wonderful people I encounter on a day-to-day basis around our town.

Take the volunteers at The Lights, for example (pictured, top right). They work diligently and almost invisibly to keep The Lights continually sanitized and safe for us who have been paying visit to the theatre to receive our first or second vaccine.

On Sunday morning, I was among them, queueing up to receive my second dose, which let us not forget, is free to us at the point of source. An incredible feat we should be grateful of.

Then there was the case of the Harrow Way student on Friday, April 23. After quietly noticing at the bus station, that I would be unable to board the bus without assistance so, in front of her peers, she stepped forward and carried my shopping on, for me. Such a small but significant act of kindness can really brighten a person's day.

These little acts of community spirit here in Andover help keep the mind off more worrying topics happening elsewhere.

Like many, I have been shocked by the harrowing images coming out of India of patients dying of the virus, funeral pyres and the utter desperation in the voices of the medical teams working to the point of exhaustion and pleading for help. How Andoverians with relatives over there must be feeling, I can't begin to imagine.

Whilst in London members of the public were exercising their rights to protest peacefully, but which predictably ended the same way, due to those with nefarious intent infiltrating well policed marches, until once again young healthy fit police, end up as casualties in hospital, instead of returning home at the end of their shifts.

In other news the 2021 Bafta Awards went ahead, scrutiny surrounds the prime minister Boris Johnson, over the cost of his home furnishings, whilst locally, parties are fielding candidates for the up-and-coming elections and Andover is gradually opening up once again after lockdown with pop-up shops and new businesses.

We must remember this is a global pandemic which requires us to think globally. Being in receipt of my second vaccination does not absolve me of worrying and caring for those that are so desperately reliant on international aid.

It has been a week of contradictions yet alongside this, the world turns. We are all so much more than the sum of our parts. Babies are born, people die, get married, go to school, work, care for children with life limiting diseases, attend hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, churches.

Do please consider praying for those who need our help. God Bless.

My column will be going monthly, starting from next week.