I’m away at the moment, trying to decompress after another year that can be best described as a mixed bag. Some joy, some loss, much hard work.

But as the clock strikes midnight at the end of 2025 I will shed one hat and put on another. I will stop being the Chair of the Transparency Project, and become (as if by magic) the Vice Chair of the FLBA.

My feelings are mixed about this too. Excitement and trepidation about the FLBA, and sadness and hope about the Transparency Project. It isn’t healthy for any one organisation to have the same leader forever, so I hope that in stepping down from the TP I will also free it up to become something more than ‘Lucy’s pet project’ (it is much more than that, because it has always been very much a team effort, but that is the perception), and something more enduring. I’ll still be involved in TP, but it’s time for others to take it forward.

In the same way, I hope that new hands and eyes at the FLBA will also do that organisation some good – whilst Leslie Samuels and I have been around on the FLBA committee (and Leslie as an officer) for some years, we are both relative newcomers in comparison to the outgoing chair, James Roberts. I don’t think the members of the FLBA fully appreciate the work he has put in on their behalf over the years, and the impact that work has had, so although I am undoubtedly nothing like a clone of James (the mind boggles at such an idea), I do know that whatever Leslie and I are able to achieve during our terms of office will be based upon that solid foundation. We have much to thank James for and a lot to live up to.

Anyway, this is all very worthy. I hope that this short post finds you well, that it will go out on cue at its scheduled time and that it will find its way into your inbox whilst you are sipping a lovely drink on a very squishy sofa – whether that drink is a delightful chablis, a sloe gin, a pina colada or a hot chocolate – and that you will have had some brief respite from the onslaught of time sensitive and emotionally taxing work that we all do.

May 2026 bring you peace and contentment. Look after yourselves x