As we prepare for the brave new ‘new normal’ it’s been a strange few months, even stranger almost than when we were in the midst of lockdown. The return to ‘business as usual’ is complicated by the need to have learned lessons and to move forward adopting, adapting and abandoning as we go. This is incredibly challenging as, much like during the very active phase of COVID-19, we have no data to guide us on which of these to do. During COVID-19 we made decisions rapidly, based on what we hoped was good evidence and were agile and flexible about everything. Staff slid between jobs and roles learning new skills, supporting others who were less knowledgeable. Traditional barriers, red tape, finance, having to get agreement from everyman and his dog seemed to disappear and common sense seemed to prevail, but we are moving back to the usual NHS and we are being increasingly asked to evidence why we want to adopt, adapt or abandon things that we did during the COVID-19 period—not easy when the drive was to just get on