Thankfully, we’ve been able to further ease lockdown measures this week and reopen more of our society.

Since Monday, Andover’s pubs, restaurants, cinemas, hotels and gyms have been able to resume indoor service – and now they need us.

Please support them whether it’s having a pint, a meal, catching a film or just burning off a few calories - they’ve been through a lot over the past year.

In the same way we rallied round during lockdown, helping the most vulnerable, we now have to rally round our hospitality industry as it gets back on its feet.

We can take these steps as Covid deaths have been falling and our vaccine programme continues at pace. Some 57 million people have now been given a vaccine – over a third of all adults have had both doses.

However, the Indian variant is a very sobering reminder that the virus is still in circulation – so please remember to stay sensible and follow social distancing guidelines with lots of hand washing. And when you’re called for your jab please take it – it’s our only way back to normal life. Early evidence seems to point to the vaccine having good effect against this new variant also.

We now all await the further release in June – until then please raise a glass to British hospitality.