This is the week in which we went through the half year of living with Covid restrictions and their consequences. We’ve got used to some aspects - widespread working from home and wearing masks, for example, but seem to be kicking out at others. A piece of research this week suggested an extraordinary level of non-compliance with obligations to self-isolate.

It feels as if we’ve been through waves of emotional response to the crisis. We have seen times of grin and bear it, floods of support for the NHS, key workers, Captain Tom and a resilience in the face of bad news. On the other hand, the mood this week comes across as both low and tetchy. It’s one thing to see further restrictions coming from some way off as the inevitable consequence of the summer easing, but it’s still a blow when they arrive. We’ve been offered light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a vaccine, but we’ve also been told that we’re only half way through at best, the nights are drawing in and we’ve had semblances of normality taken away from us.

This week has been marked by divisions. There has been support for the government (if you look hard enough) and a dismissal of the Prime Minister’s broadcast as Churchill-ian nonsense by one high profile entrepreneur. There has been the suggestion of imminent availability of a vaccine countered by a growth of concern about its safety. There has been a growth in confirmed virus cases countered by dismissal of the international response to Covid as a global conspiracy. There are those who take adherence to the restrictions seriously as a civic duty and those who defy them because they feel that it the virus won’t affect them badly if they contract it. There are those who trust the need for restrictions and those who are saying that enough is enough and we should now let it take its course. Easing the divisions will talk more than a broadcast festooned in Union Jacks.

Whilst I would not ever want to go near reining in their editorial freedoms, it is unhelpful to the general mood when news organisations seem so determined at times to create gloomy stories. I felt some sympathy for the Health Secretary this week when he was asked if he would rule out keeping students at universities over Christmas, a question that he had little alternative to answer by saying that he has learned not to rule anything out. This in turn was used to create a headline about students being forced to spend Christmas away from home during the week in which many of them were leaving home for the first time which was bound to cause anxiety. At times like this, it is an important role of journalists to hold government to account, but feeding questions to Ministers which seen designed to do little more than create their own headlines is not helpful to anyone.

Public borrowing has steepled, but no budget is now in sight, which was significant economic news in itself. The Chancellor has been otherwise occupied, and his announcement this week has had a mixed reception. Almost inevitably, the new job retention scheme will be effective for some but not for others, not least because not every business is able to structure itself in a way which means that people can work at least one third of their usual hours. As the Chancellor has said, given that the public purse is finite, he can’t save every job and every business, and, the new scheme notwithstanding, sizeable job losses remain inevitable. The next issue will be to provide sufficient economic stimulus to head off the lurking prospect of long term unemployment and the economic drag that it creates.

Elsewhere in his announcement, the lengthening of repayment schedules for bounceback and CBIL loans helps to address the cashflow crunch that many businesses are facing as other help schemes fall away and help for the self-employed, whilst late in arriving, will also be welcomed.

We also shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that many businesses are holding their own or better and that in a number of areas, jobs are being created. Opportunities do exist, and those bold enough to do so are going for them.

At the end of a news week that been so busy that the news that passenger railways have effectively ceased to be privatised, a big story in other circumstances, has slipped by virtually unnoticed, enjoy the weekend. For me, the upside of the rain is that I’ll get a week off from my forced marriage to the lawnmower. You have to take the good news when you can.