The Almshouses provided by Worcester Municipal Charities are a key partner in providing social housing, not through new build, but through adapting and renovating their existing properties. It was indeed wonderful to be able to open, along with our MP, another four flats in Ingelthorpe’s Yard at the back of the Hopmarket last week. WMC now have 100 flats for the single homeless and retired. Even more astonishing is that this charity has been going since the 1590s but a sad sign we still need them in the 21st century. It was great to see old friends and colleagues at the event too, people dear to me over the last 35 years.

At the other end of the scale, the Apprenticeship Awards for schemes run through Hereford and Worcester Group Training. Around 300 people attended Sixways (can’t say that too often these days) for the ceremonies, certificates and excellence awards. Vocational apprenticeships are as valuable as qualifications achieved in academia, plus you get paid! And they are not only for young people leaving school and college, but a large number of people with jobs are using the apprenticeship model to further their careers or even change careers. Really well done!

In between I had a long conversation with the City Council Managing Director about what is going on now and planned for the future in Worcester, across art, culture, employment, investment, development, heritage, tourism, housing, cost of living, flooding, and of course Millwall.

Worcester Twinning Association met this week to receive reports from the various towns we are linked with in France, Germany and Lithuania, and beyond. Indeed I had had New Year greetings to us all from our sister city in China, Hezhou, ahead of the Chinese New Year celebrations due next week. It’s the year of The Rabbit, in case you were wondering.