Normally August is holiday season but this year for many of us working for the NHS any form of holiday has not been possible. Fortunately, some of you have been able to take some time off maybe with family and/or partners. Some of you have had a staycation and explored parts of this country you may not have been to before. The brave among you may have left the shores of Britain to play quarantine roulette; can you get to and from your holiday destination before quarantine comes down on you.  For those unlike me working through August I hope you get some rest before too long. My own staycation was a lovely week repainting my lounge. My pet hate is ceilings and my hair is definitely a shade whiter (actually its not called white but “polar star”). Anyway, all done now and the furniture is back and after a few washes my hair is back to grey.

A few days after I wrote the July President’s blog I heard about the death of Prof Sanjiv (Sam) Gambhir. He died of cancer just a couple of years after his teenage son also died of cancer. He was one of the true innovators in nuclear medicine he used molecular imaging methods to identify many pathways involved in cancer and its treatment. He found a home at Stamford University and embraced the spirit of innovation coming from the adjacent Silicon Valley. He was an amazingly generous teacher and would take time to talk to his or anyone else’s students. With Peter Ell he edited our standard textbook of Nuclear Medicine. Even though we only met a few times he would always stop and talk to me and discuss what we were doing in Cambridge. He was a leading light for our specialty and his passing leaves us all the poorer.

As the grip of COVID on our world continues we are finding we have to do more in the virtual world. Our Autumn BNMS will be on the same date the 23^rd of September but will now be a virtual meeting. Though it will still be oragnised by the Leeds nuclear medicine team. As an innovation a department can have a group registration so you can all share in with the autumn BNMS together. We hope this new idea will allow more of our members to become involved in the meeting. Later the same day will be our virtual AGM so please remember to log on for this. This year’s EANM will also be a virtual meeting so look out for registration details for this meeting as well. Maybe you could cook your own Sachertorte and eat this during the virtual EANM to get that Vienna feeling. What will happen next year we do not know. I am meant to be in South Korea in January 2021 but will the second wave cause further cancellations. Meanwhile the conference centre that we are meant to be going to in February 2021 for the South African Society Meeting has gone out of business. We must accept we live in a time of uncertainty.

However, we must not be too depressed we still have our patients to look after and they still need our care. We will get out of this horrible disease or just learn how to live with it, things may be a bit different but hopefully we still have our family, friends and extended nuclear medicine family.

Dr John Buscombe

BNMS President