The lovely warm weather in Kent made Sunday in particular feel like it was a mid-August, and that we’d probably be whizzing off on holiday sometime soon.  In fact we were supposed to have flown to The Highlands on Sunday for a week away from the usual day to day routine.  Oh well, this time next year maybe?!

As a family we ended the day watching the Queen’s address, which will be yet another historic event for us to look back on in years to come when the pandemic is a distant memory.  Extraordinary times indeed.

It was back down to earth with a bump this morning when I remembered just how many things I’ve got on my ‘to do’ list.  We’re still focusing on staying in touch with our clients, and I suspect that will take up the first couple of days, and then we need to get back into the swing of ‘normal work’, which has fallen behind over the last month to say the least.

It’s a new tax year, so we can start setting up new ISAs from today for example, and these things still need to be done regardless of being in lockdown or not.

IT security made the headlines over the weekend, with one popular video call sharing site being criticised for allowing uninvited callers into groups, but also for sharing users data with other companies.  We should all be sceptical about what firms do with our data and how  they make their money.  Our preference is to use Microsoft Teams, as Microsoft has made it clear they do not sell data on to third parties for a profit.    Also, the business supplies the staff with modern laptops running the latest versions of software and because they are company owned, we have full control over the devices.  As a ‘Cybersmart’ approved firm, we also have a robust process in place to check security and flag any device which isn’t up to date.

We also connect to our systems via a ‘VPN’ – a virtual private network – which protects our clients data too.

Now, which of these ‘to do’ lists shall I look at first?