In this strangest of years, international cooperation has taken on a different aspect. Border closures, quarantine and testing regimes have never before been part of my daily diplomatic vocabulary. Though as a well travelled diplomat vaccination has long played a small but important part in my professional life. The world faces a common challenge that affects each country in ways that are both similar and different, as waves of infection hit us on different cycles and with differing intensities, It has been a year of global and national learning as we try to find the best responses to protect people and safeguard livelihoods. BLOG: https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/sianmacleod/2021/02/08/boycie-and-baldrick-get-a-shot-in-the-arm/

This is the first blogcast I have recorded for several weeks. This is mainly because I had to travel to the UK for family reasons - a journey that was a story in itself. But there is another reason too. I have been spending my evenings doing an online training course. Diplomacy is a career of life-long learning, whether that is languages, local history, international treaties or law, or the science behind topical foreign policy priorities. At the moment that means, for example, improving our understanding of coronavirus infection transmission rates and of carbon emissions.

Can Christmas be Christmas without presents? How do you celebrate Christmas this year?

The global skies have been pretty dark metaphorically over past months. They have been pretty gloomy too here literally for much of the time. I’m lucky enough to look out of my window in Belgrade at trees and sky. Sadly though that view is often rather murky, with visibility limited to the great oak trees at the end of my garden. One glimpse of a silver lining in the metaphorical clouds is the growing political, media and public attention focused on air quality. BLOG: https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/sianmacleod/2020/11/27/bad-air-days-and-silver-linings/

This has been a solemn week in what has been a desperately sad month in a desperately sad year. On 11 November the UK like many other countries commemorates Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day, which originally marked the guns falling silent at the end of the First World War. Every country has its own way of commemorating past conflict. For us 11 November is about remembrance. As we say at our traditional commemoration: At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/sianmacleod/2020/11/13/time-like-an-ever-rolling-stream/

Diplomacy is never a 9-5 job and, however much we like to plan, it is rarely possible to predict exactly how your time will be spent in any given week. The coronavirus pandemic has added to the unpredictability. One thing is certain though: my week will involve drinking a lot of tea. BLOG: https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/sianmacleod/2020/11/06/tea-with-everything-a-diplomatic-week/

Diplomats move house more than most people. We move between countries every two, three or four years.  We move backwards and forwards to and from our own countries. Even within our home countries jobs in our foreign ministries may be spread across more than one city. BLOG: https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/sianmacleod/2020/10/30/a-house-in-dedinje/

This week stories about negotiations have been prominent in the media both in the UK and in Serbia. The history of diplomacy might also be called the history of negotiation. Negotiating is a way of life for diplomats. Whether you are working on a major arms control treaty, opening a new diplomatic mission or drafting a statement to be delivered on behalf of several countries, you are likely to be using your negotiating skills. https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/sianmacleod/2020/10/23/sir-mick-jagger-and-the-art-of-negotiation/

I arrived in Belgrade just over a year ago. But for over half of that time lives have been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic. For any newly arrived diplomat, that means that many of those first twelve months when you would be out and about starting to get to know your host country have been spent at home, probably learning how to use online technology. For anxious months we have watched the coronavirus figures ebb and flow here as well as in our home countries. The current relative lull in the pandemic storm in Serbia has given Belgrade based diplomats the chance to venture out of the the city, with care and caution, to complete interrupted business and fulfil postponed promises to visit. It has been a bit like emerging from hibernation though without any certainty of how long the new freedoms will last. https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/sianmacleod/2020/10/16/diplomatic-tours/

When I walk up the stairs to my office in the Embassy I pass a series of painted portraits and photographs of former heads of the UK’s diplomatic mission in Belgrade. Over the years our diplomatic mission has had different names and a different status. It has been a Legation, a Consulate General and, as now, a British Embassy. We are of now the UK Embassy to the Republic of Serbia. But my predecessors were accredited at different times to Serbia, the Kingdom of Serbia, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, and Serbia and Montenegro. The portraits start with George Hodges who arrived by boat across the Danube in 1837. They continue, with some gaps, up to my predecessor Denis Keefe who left Belgrade last year. There is one very obvious difference between me and all the diplomats in the portraits: they are all men. https://blogs.fcdo.gov.uk/sianmacleod/2020/10/09/faces-of-diplomacy/