‘There’s no way to avoid it, there’s a lot of it going around…’ I swear, if I hear that one more time I won’t be responsible for my actions.

Of course we’ve all got coughs, colds and sneezes, we’re bound to.

We have been shutting ourselves away for so long our immunity to everyday bugs and diseases has dropped alarmingly and our ability to fight off even mundane infections is non-existent.

In one way I’m glad I’m full of snot again and coughing my lungs up, at least it shows we’re on our way back to some sort of normal existence. I’ve sat cheek by jowl with cinema goers and pushed my way through busy pubs – although crowded railway carriages must be the worst as anyone using a train immediately loses the ability to put their hand in front of their face.

But I haven’t even got a problem with the ‘filthy unwashed’ showering me with clouds of bacteria as I’m convinced it is this approach of getting down and dirty which has helped me survive in life thus far.

For the same reason I have no problem with a baby crawling along a grimy floor, or even licking it occasionally for that matter. As far as I remember my mum never put mud on the

menu but she wasn’t adverse to the idea of us getting as dirty as we liked and mucking in with every other tyke on the street. It never did us any harm.

'The sooner we get back to a time when we were able to grin and bear things the better for all of us...'

Almost as bad as those telling you there’s a lot of it around are the Covid brigade still seeking to distance us from each other and normality. There is no longer any requirement to concern ourselves with Coronavirus and we must move on – just accept it like any other inconvenience and live with it.

I don’t subscribe to any of the biblical retribution or other conspiracy theories but, even having lost some people close to me, can accept, like any other diseases it hit the most vulnerable members of society hardest.

And, it’s no good suffering from any false sense of security, the way global societies now operate, even leaving aside meddling in the food chain, means the next pandemic/s are just around the corner, so ditch the sanitizer and face masks and stop fearing a few germs.

The sooner we get back to a time when we were able to grin and bear things the better for all of us.