I somehow managed to get Covid again this week. My second bout of the world-famous lurgy.

I’m not seeking sympathy here, but it was all the more impressive coming, as it did, precisely three weeks after my latest updated dose of the vaccine.

It wouldn’t be so bad, but the vaccine always makes me feel like death warmed up for 24 hours after having it. Which I thought was a sign my body was vigorously producing the antibodies I needed to protect me.

While praising my body for putting up the defences in such a style, I consoled myself at the time that at least I won’t catch Covid this year. Not the first time I’ve been proved very wrong.

But, in truth, the symptoms weren’t a touch on the dose I got back in November 2020 where I spent two weeks in bed watching the daily death count rack up on the news and feeling wretched. So perhaps it worked. A bit. Or, of course, simply that Covid isn’t so potent these days.

My daughter remarked how ‘retro’ I was for buying a testing kit this time around. How things change. But with elderly parents, it would be remiss of me to take any risks with their health.

How quickly we all move on. And perhaps for a column looking back on life in Kent this is too recent history.

After all, it was only three years ago we were banned from meeting up with friends and family for Christmas. But recent or not, it was a remarkable period in our shared histories.

When getting Covid meant almost daily calls from the dreaded ‘track and test’ team who seemed to spend their time calling me to say how I needed a ‘hobby’ while confined to barracks to prevent boredom kicking in – despite actually being laid up in bed with the illness.

My kids started refusing to take their calls as they stayed at home because I had it – dreading a 10-minute call with someone who seemed to have no ability to actually listen to the answers received from their list of questions. Crazy times.

Seems like a different era now.

Something hammered home this week when, while feeling sorry for myself, I was able to watch Boris Johnson give evidence at the Covid inquiry. A reflection on how the pandemic came and went.

It may still be out there causing problems, but its impact has lessened to the point where we have all returned to ‘normal’. (I refer there to Covid...although the same probably applies to Boris).

Granted, that normal seems to consist of wars, soaring costs and a government in disarray, but perhaps it was ever thus.

But we will all look back at the pandemic as one of those shared experiences – a period future generations will both get bored by our tales of and we’ll start exaggerating about. A bit like the war.

It probably won’t be long before those of us who didn’t suffer the agony of loss start banging on about what a wonderful time they had; furlough, no shopping trips, an era when we could afford the heating on and the local off-licence did deliveries to your door (well, at least ours did).

But perhaps the biggest positive takeaway from that miserable, recent, period in history is that family bonds, in many cases, were strengthened. Where the desire to prioritise work in a relentless chase of our professional ambitions was put in the shade by the value of our family, friends and neighbours.

It may have only been three years ago, but we may need reminding of that sometimes. Like washing our hands all the time, keeping our distance, binge-watching everything Netflix has to offer or wearing face masks, it all seems increasingly foreign to so many of us now. How soon we forget.

Meanwhile, I just hope my sense of taste and smell (which Covid has kindly run of with) returns before Christmas.