Do you get the feeling that we’ll never quite get back to the informal intimacy in our social relationships such as they existed before the COVID pandemic? Or is it just a feeling I have.

It’s a year since regulations regarding social distancing and green passes have been largely done away with in our Italian part of the world. The wearing of masks is now not even compulsory in public transport (although it is often mandatory in other settings like hospitals and clinics). Yet many people do continue to wear theirs in public indoor venues such as theatres and cinemas.

More generally, however, a certain degree of social distancing remains. I don’t see unaffected public embracing and kissing in our piazzas and bars as I used to. Even shaking hands seems to have gone a little out of favour. The fact is that COVID has irremediably altered our social perception as nothing else has done since – if those around can still remember – World War Two.

Is it just me or has it become more difficult to cultivate friendships post-pandemic? And let us not forget that attitudes towards coronavirus and, in particular, towards vaccinations split our social fabric. Are we still friendly towards those persons who refused to wear masks at the height of the ghastly pandemic? Do we avoid those who refused that fourth vaccination – or even any vaccination at all?

There are life changing occurrences throughout our individual earthly existences. Some may be highly personal – loss of those closest to us or cataclysmic health problems for example. Yet with this COVID business we have all suffered those losses. For instance I still have to come across someone who has not lost a dear one to the insatiable monster of that plague.

What is worse is when to the personal losses we have endured thanks the pandemic are added the national loss of an amicable and constructive relationship between the UK and the association it once formed part of, the EU and, most awful of all the loss of a sense of peace with neighbours beyond and a menacing presage of a nine-thirties war clouds atmosphere descended upon a largely optimistic continent.

It is truly turned in many instances into a giant deserted beach littered with the flotsam and jetsam of a gargantuan storm, a place where indeed ignorant armies clash by night.