“We are coming out of lockdown” my pal called me “we can meet up and finally hang out?” I nervously said: “Yes, maybe in October?”

I am worried. What if the covid is playing sneaky dumb and coming to get me?

People like ex-actor Lawrence Fox, who failed to become Mayor of London and regularly tells doctors they shouldn’t get the clap, has been telling us all that masks are for mugs and he’s pretty much been living his best life shouting at a man dressed as a bin who also stood as Mayor of London.

So, none of us have come through this pandemic unscathed even if we keep telling people we have. We all have had the fear, haven’t we?

I know I am still petrified every time my daughter Ashley coughs, and she coughs a lot with allergies, I check her temperature and ask her if she can taste a lemon that I keep to shove in her mouth for ‘taste testing’. I suspect she hates life at home under lockdown and now dislikes lemons.

There are times when I lie in bed and catastrophise about her dying and how I will cope, then husband chokes on his snoring and I wonder how the drama of a double funeral will affect me.

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I know this is my own paranoid emotions running riot in my head. Nobody should take these emotions of mine seriously, I am trying not to.

But I know I am not the only person who is paralysed with fear at every tiny issue. I had a bad fall recently going to a studio in Edinburgh and really bashed my upper arm on a metal foot bar of a chair (I was sober), luckily, it’s the fattest part of my old limbs (had it been my head I might be dead) and the bruise was HUGE and I mean really big, it went from my shoulder to below my elbow. I stupidly took photos of it and posted them on social media. I got lots of “Oh that looks sore” to “Hope you die fatty” to “that’ll turn into a blot clot and kill you, that’s how my mum died after a fall”.

So, there I was staring at my giant bruise and in between looking at the deepest green colour (which I fancied as a colour for the lobby wall) and the purple dappling that ran beneath my elbow (the same shade George Galloway resembled when he realised, he hadn’t won a seat in the election) I started to believe a clot was moving up my veins towards my heart. I was convinced I could see it making its sluggish way to kill me.

Like every good doctor, my GP asked for some images of the mixed medium art project that is my upper arm bruise and after I accidentally sent her high res images of my wee dogs itchy bum that was supposed to go to the vet (Both practices have very similar email addresses), after much explaining and apologising, she finally downloaded them, called me and explained I wasn’t dying and I had to apply a cold compress. I didn’t tell her Sharon on Facebook told me I had days to live but I think by the tone of my voice she guessed I was pretty scared.

“Tell me you haven’t googled it or listened to some pretend doctor on Facebook” she huffed. I panicked and pretended I didn’t know what google was and I explained am not on Facebook, she told me “that’s a lie I am your friend on Facebook” and told me I need to calm down and think about listening to an expert and not a woman who dishes out medical advice in between selling perfumed wax melts. She is right, Sharon on Facebook knows nothing, yet my arm felt tingly and that was surely a sign of a blood disorder?

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The end result is I never died. Yet.

My point is this, I know many people who aren’t afraid of the covid virus and seem to have spent the last year, shrugging off the fear, heading about their life unmasked, unafraid and coming out unscathed. I also know people who took lots of precautions and who have died of the virus. So, who is right?

I am going to ease out of lockdown and stop googling the phrase “Third Wave”. Remaining sensible, staying two Alsatians apart, masked up and getting two jags in the arm is the way forward.

There will be no overseas holidays, I will be sitting on the quietest part of a rocky beach in Loch Lomond in the wind and rain with a sausage dog wrapped in a blanket and that will do me. Fighting off angry swans and drinking bland flask tea is going to be a luxury for me in mid-July.

Maybe as time passes my anxiety will ease off and I won’t view every single stranger as the deadly monkey from that film ‘Outbreak’.

My life will be sitting outside a café, visits in gardens, avoiding crowded places and never taking off the mask until I am totally sure the world is covid free. But will it? There I go again, looking at the worst-case scenario.

Life will go on; I am so lucky nobody in my immediate family has been ill with covid and that should bolster my confidence. Comedy clubs are coming back, hospitality is opening up and they need people to fill their seats and spend some money to get them back on their feet. They also need customers to give them space and grace to enforce the ever-changing rules and not be impatient with them.

We need to have confidence to get back to some normality and trust me, I am trying my best to fight this anxiety and join society again.

So with that in mind, I am pulling on my big girl pants, getting a mask on and getting back out there. Just give me time.