As 2022 began, the mood was uncertain. A second Christmas in a row had been deadened by COVID, except in Westminster which we were discovering had been a non-stop party. "It was Dante's Inferno for us, Disco Inferno for them", a renowned wit (me) had pithily tweeted. I was using the nationwide emergence from restrictions to force myself out of a period of low mental health and isolation that long preceded the pandemic. I'd started going to a weekly chess night at a pub in Brighton and was in a bluegrass band.