Last Thursday evening, just as I've done for the past nine weeks, I have joined my neighbours in standing outside at eight o'clock to clap for the NHS. In what has been a difficult and often frightening time it has always represented a moment of much needed hope and solidarity.
The question is, should this week, the tenth, be the last time we all do so? Annemarie Plas the Dutch born Londoner who started the weekly nationwide round of applause for NHS staff and other key workers thinks so.
Speaking on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show last week she said 'because this is the ninth time and next week will be ten times, I think it would be beautiful to be the end of the series'.
Ms Plas has expressed concerns that the event is in danger of becoming politicised, telling the BBC that she felt the ' narrative is starting to change and I don't want the clap to be negative '.
She suggested that it was perhaps time to look at creating an 'annual moment to remember' NHS workers and the lives lost during the pandemic.
Despite her concerns Ms Plas did make a broad political point in her BBC interview, saying that ordinary people had shown their support and gratitude and that it was now up to 'the people that are in power to reward NHS staff and carers and give them the respect they deserve'.
A point not entirely dissimilar from one made by Labour leader Sir Kier Stamer and also reported by the BBC, who said that many key workers felt 'overlooked and underpaid ' and that they would benefit from extra funding rather than applause.
I can only speak from personal experience, but something does seem to have changed over the past couple of weeks.
The first few times we all stood outside clapping for the caseworkers battling a disease that was, killing hundreds of people every day it felt like being part of something special. A small act of defiance against despair and a welcome chance to interact at a time when we were all socially distancing like our lives depended on it; because they just might.
Things have definitely changed, the noise of hands clapping and people cheering like they were at a football match has stopped ringing over the rooftops. There is usually maybe half a dozen of us stood there going through the motions in an awkwardly self-conscious way that is uniquely English.
That maybe isn't such a surprise, the existential threat has, hopefully, passed and as a result how we feel about the pandemic has changed. It has morphed from a monster into a lead weight dragging behind the lives we are all trying in our own way and at our own speed to get back.
Perhaps the time has come to move on from what was a spontaneous show of support to a more formal act of remembrance. A collective experience that has upended so many lives into grief and uncertainty deserves to be marked with solemn ceremony equivalent to that of Remembrance Sunday.
Having said that I will be outside my house applauding this Thursday evening, preserving a tradition that will die out and then re-emerge in time as something else. Like every sacrifice made for the good of others the sacrifices of NHS workers and the grief of those who have lost loved ones deserves to be remembered in the setting and rising of the sun.
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