THERE is the feeling of being a prisoner released on licence. I peer out on to what I once called my exercise yard and know that there is a world beyond it and beyond Covid.

The “exercise yard” was and is, of course, a beautiful park. It was my haven for some months. It was my escape for my hour of licensed exercise.

Now in the Covid thaw I have been abroad to work, been to the pictures, even returned to the fitba and queued for a fish supper. The normal staples of my life are back.

Then in the time of Covid it was a birl around the pitches and back to the flat. The view of the park in 2022 reminds me that my trials were minor. The lessons, though, were major.

They fell into three categories. The first is: what I didn’t know and found out about myself.

I always thought myself to be independent to an extreme degree. No man is an island, except in his bath, but I was certainly someone who did not seek human interaction daily. In times of crisis, I retreat to my cave, consoling myself with book and music. In good times. I largely do the same.

Covid – and its imperatives – should have been, well, a walk in the park. This perception changed exactly 10 weeks in. The walk was just about completed when the radio announcer in my lughole said it was Day 70 of lockdown. The man in front of me simultaneously picked up his child. I realised it had been 10 weeks since I had touched another human being.

The blessing of modern technology had kept me in touch with my family and my partner. But, at 65, I realised this was my longest time without human touch. This elicited a gasp and a dollop of self-pity. The latter passed but I knew then that I was not as self-sufficient as I believed. It was a beneficial lesson.

As restrictions ease, I am more open to social occasions, more kindly disposed to their ability to bring me out of myself and into the wider world. I am not yet a 24-hour party person, but can manage a decent 20 minutes plus.

The second lesson was more of a reinforcement. It was a matter of being proved right when you want to be proved wrong.

It was signalled by the clang of pans in support of the NHS and the belief that the din would subside and not much would change.

It was articulated by the sheer, brazen lie of “being all in it together”. Even in the days of confinement, I knew this was not the case. I did not quite realise that on the day I was reflecting about the lack of human contact, there was a Downing Street party.

I can be precise about this because apparently every day was party day at No10.

I accepted, too, that I was one of the privileged. I stuck to the laws but knew I was fortunate.

This occurred to me every morning. Looking out from my balcony, over the park, and into the distance, I could just make out the towers of Maryhill. There, far above the earth, sat families on zero hour contracts, with weans both confused and restrained and worries unrestrained and abounding.

My lack of human touch was put in its place, They needed more than a cuddle.

So there was the community that was restricted and the community that was not. The obviousness of this, the visceral belief even in 2020 that this was the case, does not lessen my anger. But we are told to praise Brexit being done, the jabs being given and move on.

In a life where I have been blessed, I learned that I could still be bitter.

The third lesson was the ability of something, anything to divide humanity. The latest symbol was the mask. On my weekly shop during the first, severe lockdown, I noticed a man not wearing a mask. My attention to him was drawn by him whistling. That is, he was not only not wearing a mask but wanted everyone to know it.

Was this an invitation to be challenged? The assistants kept their eyes on the floor. I moved quickly from his vicinity, mainly because he was in the Lidl middle aisle and steaks knives were on half-price offer and who knows what his next move might be?

I learned from him, and others, that everything is either right or wrong. At least for them. The room for nuance has gone. It has been squeezed on both sides. The clue is in the terms pro and anti that can be used before vaccine, lockdown, restrictions, masks and a host of other nouns.

The idea that once can have reservations about, say, side effects but consider vaccines are on balance “a very good thing” can raise ire in opposing camps. Mibbes aye and mibbes naw is now a position met by contempt by the partisan.

But the biggest lesson of all is, of course, that I – and you – survived to reflect and perhaps learn.

This privilege was denied to more than five million fellow humans. This figure is calculated by the World Health Organisation. It will provide another argument. But not one that will console the bereaved or save the victims. We have all surely learned that.

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