Tomorrow morning, Easyjet permitting, I’m off to see a pal in Paris for a few days. And while I’m fair excited at the prospect of travelling furth of Scotland again, I’m still not sanguine about air travel.

Friends have reported that nobody seems much bothered about mask wearing on board any more, or taking any of the normal precautions while being in confined spaces with a large posse of complete strangers.

Being prone to short memory loss is one thing; failing to remember how many Scots have died, how many have been very ill, and how many are still in the throes of long Covid is quite another.

Recently several close friends have contracted the virus and, largely thanks to vaccinations, managed to avoid the worst symptoms. Yet absolutely nobody wants to get sick, even for a few days, or to experience that low level sense of panic that they might fall into the “long” camp.

So it seems to make sense to keep protecting yourself with the still freely available hand sanitisers in stores, keeping wearing your mask in shops with lots of other customers, and keeping to strict hand washing routines.

The last time I was in the French capital, just weeks before the first lockdown, we did our usual round of favourite galleries. In one of them there was lots of Asian tourists all masked up. How we laughed at their super cautious approach to tourism. How wrong we were!

Of course at that precise moment we didn’t have much of a clue what was about to hit us. Well we, ken noo.

So if you bump into a woman of a certain age at an airport near you resplendent in a mask and clutching the customary pile of newsprint, please restrain your merriment.

Meanwhile the sartorial editing goes on apace. What do you pack when leaving and returning to a country which thinks summer is like winter with warmer rain, but hoping to spend a weekend in proper heat?

Mind you, I made the mistake of checking the Parisian weather forecast. Partly cloudy with showers most days. Good grief, that I can get at home.