"So welcome to Lockdown Diaries week 10.

Seventy days - I don't think any of us when this all started could imagine that we'd still be in these sorts of circumstances seventy days on, but here we are and I don't know if you saw this week in the Coventry Telegraph on Coventry Live, they had a little piece on the fifteen things to miss when it lockdown ends and some of the things I thought were really quite sad, things like you know, you'll miss being able to watch as much TV as you want to watch whenever you want to watch it and not sure whose life actually works like that but there were some good things in there because one of the things I think that they were trying to say to us is work out what's good about now and hold onto it afterwards because we are coming through this period. We are going to go into a new period quite soon and there were some really good things there so you know, if you feel closer to your neighbours than you ever had, hold onto it. If you got a sense of community spirit that perhaps wasn't as strong before, hold onto it. If you've got a way of connecting with family and friends that you didn't have before or you didn't have as strongly before, hold onto it. It's a slightly strange peace but I think it's got some great advice in there.

Now I'm wearing a different outfit today and that's because I've just been doing some videos for our offer holders, to tell our offer holders where we are, what we are trying to do, how we going to be communicating with them in the future and thinking about those students who are going to be joining us this autumn as well as of course are students that will be coming back - so I'm sort of wearing a suit but only sort of wearing a suit because although this is all very smart up here I am of course wearing shorts.

I wanted to start this week by just sharing something with you from one of our students, and forgive me for looking like this because I've got it on my phone here and I just wanted to read it to you. One of our students, Georgia and she posted this just a couple of days ago and thanks to Paul who shared this, so Georgia says: "three years ago today I went to my part time job as a first-aider at the Manchester Arena. I expected a normal shift but instead I became involved in a terror attack. In addition to having to work as a first responder that night, I was due to sit my A-levels only a few days later. I attempted to complete my exams but did not manage to sit them all, resulting in a significant underperformance compared to what I had hoped, and I was terrified that my plans for the future were ruined. But now I've just finished my dissertation to round off my 3 year degree in Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick. Just like in year 13, I did not finish my University career the way I planned on, but I'm so grateful for everything that the University is giving me despite the horrors of that night, I'm quite proud for my achievements". And I think we can all say we're really proud of you Georgia but also of our colleagues in Liberal Arts Global Sustainable Development who have been working with you and working with so many other people over the course of the last few years, but also over the course of last several weeks.

And last week, I don't do this scripted but I have a few notes here because I want to make sure that I refer to people and what they have done - but I don't do this scripted so sometimes things come out in a challenging way shall we say. So last week a number of you heard me say something like, please say this is worth doing... Please say this is good, and a number of you do say, yes keep going it's very good. What I was trying to say is it's really wonderful to hear you and what you think and where you're going with this and this week it was really great to hear from Deborah and Nick and Fiona and Leslie about how they are using these sorts of communications to really kind of connect with people and to keep us, as a community very much connected.

I think a lot of people are taking time because it's half term and you have had it had it booked in your diaries and one of the things that's come through a little bit is the lack of commuting. Now a number live right round the University but a number of you live quite a long way away and do an hour or so commute everyday and Poonam, Andy and a few others have been writing in saying it's quite strange not having that commute because on one hand, you save a lot of time all day but on the other hand clearly or a lot of people who do commuting use that commuting time to get your head into a particular place or to try to work out a particular problem - it's just another example I think of the different ways that we're trying to think about our working and getting through this difficult period.

There are an increasing number of online materials that colleagues are putting together to help with schooling, teaching and to keep people interested. I think this last week I was talking about the Faculty of Arts at home series on YouTube. This week Paul has sent me the details of the Warwick Classics Network - many of you will know about this, it's a fantastic outreach activity, really connecting - they've got a number of materials coming up quite soon and Paul tells me there's a project underway to help us all understand a lot more about Roman Coventry, which I must confess I know very, very little but I do know that there was some Roman artefacts discovered across the campus so we must in some way have been part of that that Roman Coventry.

In maths, Jen tells me that there is a series just starting of videos again to explain different mathematical issues for is all but also for school kids as well, the first episode coming soon in mathematics and matchmaking which sounds quite fascinating. Celia sent me a wonderful and a wonderful piece that she's done on randomised trials but delivered through the medium of poetry, quite an extraordinary thing and also I've had some great videos. Gareth sent me some videos that the colleagues are putting together in the Student Accommodation, Student Services, cleaning staff, just showing us what campus looks like. We need to get some of those out so you can see it. I've been at the University for thirteen years and obviously I've never been away from campus for so long and it's just fascinating to see these pictures to see how things have changed I talked about it a couple weeks ago when when people were sending me in some pictures of my key workers, and in some areas nature really is taking over again. It's quite fascinating, quite fascinating to see.

A number of you have been telling me about all the community work that's going on from VE-day onwards, and I just wanted to pick just one example this week because we had perhaps just a little bit more detail. Richard wrote to say that in history and there are a couple of other colleagues from University history, they've set up a WhatsApp group and it covers forty-five homes in the industry and through that they needed to organise shared shopping, a visit from the coffee man with what appears to be very long social distance queues of people waiting to get hold of their coffee and talking. Food bank Friday, food bank Friday, I think I have given it the name of food bank Friday, but on a Friday people donate food for the food bank and it's a fantastic thing to do and the collaborating also to make the place look better and more kind of integrated and I think if I understand correctly the next part of the project is to work on lamp posts and get some flowers around the lamp posts to give that sense of nature and beauty across the whole of the street. And they have one of the most wonderful things of all, one of those wonderful things for what is of course a secret chocolate fairly, and that secret chocolate fairy who delivers either randomly or in a carefully planned way sends secret chocolates to various houses before 6:00 o'clock in the morning. So it's great stuff, this is a great example of that community spirit and a great example of one of those things in that Coventry Telegraph piece. Those are the sorts of things if we can hold onto them as things do start to ease up it would be a wonderful and great thing.

Slightly similar but different vein, I have had a great email this week with loads of pictures from Chiara. Chiara works in Venice for us, she runs the Venice operation down there and helps students find accommodation and all sorts of things and she is finished. She has been living there through this really terrible period of time that has been going on through Northern Italy and it's been absolutely wonderful to see some of those pictures of Venice, that magnificent city if you know it coming back to life and but one of the things she's saying is that it is possible to do Venetian style rowing through the grand canal because the motor boats, the big cruise ships and so on, they're not going at this moment in time but the image that struck me the most is the one where Chiara has a picture of how she and others have been supporting people who have had to self isolate because in Venice, you got really tall and narrow buildings so you can't easily go up and downstairs to deliver things so for that person self isolating at the top throw out some string or rope I suppose it probably is, it goes down to the ground Chiara and others tie the basket on, they pull it back up and that's how they help support people in the architecture of Venice, so that's a fantastic and wonderful thing to see.

Thank you for sending me all sorts of fun stuff, Jill sent me a great video of walking with her four Cocker spaniels, I think there are four dogs there but they're all over each other, it is just like a mass of dogs having great fun going for their walk. Olivia sent me some videos of dancing, she had a partner dancing so it's a great example of how people are really trying to keep their hobbies and interests going. It's just a reminder of what the struggle is for so many community groups, so many charities, so many small companies that organise and do the things we want to do, whether it be yoga teachers, whether it be dancing classes. What a struggle it has been for people to keep these things going and it's great to see when people like Olivia and others do it themselves, get that message out there that we just gotta keep going and some of this stuff will come back in the not too distant future now. Anna in the WMG SME group sent a great picture of a Curry night. I can't remember if it's curry by zoom or Curry by teams but it's currently carried by our new medium anyway where everyone is having a good time talking and she also, I don't really understand this but, she also tells me they play a game of rock paper scissors game, a wrestling game with some sort of wrestlers dressed up to play rock paper scissors. I can't understand it so if anybody can explain it to me, I'll ever be so grateful to hear about it.

Finally thank you for everybody who's been sending me stuff about our online time capsule project. Thank you to Steve who's volunteered to help on the technical side and clearly has enormous experience of putting together websites and things of that sort and also to Helen from the Modern Records Centre - I think this is fantastic news they said what they'd really like to do is not only help us to put this together but also to hold onto this so that we keep this so there will be a permanent record, permanently curated looking forward into the future to capture our life as a community at this particular point in time.

Please keep sending me in some materials because what we want to do is, we're trying to gather some stuff so we could look at the themes and then get the group of people who volunteered to help me technically get this together to look at what it is, so we can then report back to you what we've got and a lot of we haven't got quite got so much of to try and encourage you to send us a few more materials as well. And then we can start the process of actually putting it together and to building it. The online project was inspired by a few people but Marsha you are one of them as you know and you told me that when I said that last week, your daughter jumped for joy as she heard your name mentioned but you didn't hear her name mentioned so Marsha for your daughter Lily this is a shout out for you - this is for you Lily.

Thanks all very much, have a great week. The sun's been shining which is wonderful, summer seems to have come early, I'm now deeply regretting I think this jacket on - this room is absolutely boiling but we have another one of our lockdown Diaries next week so please, please, please, keep sending me stuff and do stay connected.

Thanks very much."

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart Croft