The restrictions imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic have put paid to so many events over the past year that we barely notice when another cancellation is announced.
The news that the Turriff Show will not go ahead this year was different, however.
When the 2020 event was called off, we were all looking forward to 2021 when we hoped we would be at a stage where things would be back to ‘normal’.
There is only one other year that I can remember when the show didn’t go ahead, and that was due to the Foot and Mouth disease outbreak in 2001.
I know the organising committee will have agonised over the decision.
Everyone involved will have wanted nothing more than to see the crowds back at the Haughs.
The decision to cancel is totally understandable.
Progress is being made with the vaccination programme, with an incredible 12million people across the UK vaccinated at the time of writing.
However, there is still a huge amount of uncertainty as to when mass public events like this will be permitted to take place.
The guidance we have all been following, particularly around social distancing, will likely continue for a long time to come.
The Turriff Show is a huge event, with about 20,000 visitors. It requires an enormous amount of planning and organisation each year.
I sympathise with the organising committee, and I know this must have been difficult, but they have made the right call.
We will all just have to look ahead to 2022 now.
Aside from the news about the show, another big issue in Turriff over the past week has been the lack of a local vaccine centre.
While the programme is thankfully picking up pace after a sluggish start in Scotland, too many people are facing long journeys to get their jab.
I highlighted the case of constituents in Fyvie who have been shielding for the past year and were told to go the TECA in Aberdeen – a 44-mile round trip.
That is not what people were led to believe at the start of this process. Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership (AHSCP) said the plan was for everybody to be within 10 miles of a vaccination centre.
Many people in Turriff won’t mind a drive up to Macduff to get their jab. But there are also a lot of people without access to transport, or who have been shielding and will be wary about travelling too far.
From the beginning, I asked what the plan was going to be for Turriff, given the ongoing closure of the originally identified site at Turriff Cottage Hospital.
There are certainly other venues that could be used, and the sports centre was used to vaccinate the over-80s. Common sense would suggest that venue could have been kept in use.
A decision was taken, however, to have no vaccine centre in Turriff for the next stage of the process.
That not only impacts upon the 5,700 population in the town itself, but also about another 2,000 living in the surrounding area.
The subsequent closure of the site at Ellon only compounded the issue.
I am making the case for a local vaccine centre in Turriff with AHSCP and NHS Grampian as forcefully as I can. I will continue to do so.