I was just sitting down to write this week's column when the Red Arrows flew right over my head.

I got goosebumps and felt the butterflies in my stomach as the whole of the UK marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

Then, at 11am, a two-minute silence to remember and bring us all together.

I felt a sense of being a part of something greater than oneself. There is an important lesson there for the times we are living in now.

War pulled us together as a nation. Will Covid-19 have the same impact?

In some ways I feel it already has, then in other ways I feel it has distanced us as a society.

When you hear from some people what the fear of Covid-19 has done to them, it has almost made them prisoners in their own homes.

I saw with my own eyes this week the effect the virus is having on people when I went to my local fishmongers.

As I approached the shop, this elderly lady started to go into a panic attack. She shouted “stay back”, but once I had calmed her down saying "don’t worry, I am also vulnerable" and stopped a few metres away from her, she started to speak with me.

The fear she was living in was real. She was shaken and in high-survival mode just to go to the shops to collect fish for her husband.

He, in turn, was too scared to leave his home. And as she waited for her fish, the poor lady had another panic attack where I ended up having to tell another woman to stay away from her.

It was a very surreal situation to be in but it did highlight to me that the mental scars of Covid-19 could be with us for a long time.

As I cycled home, I wondered if this lady and her husband would ever go back to the life they had before. How many people are living like this around the world? And what can we do to help them?

Unlike wartime, where we could come together as a community to rebuild and support each other, we are now told to stay away from each other, not to get closer than two metres to another human.

What will be the lasting effect of this on us as a society? It is well known how important a community is when it comes to people's mental health and I often ask myself how we can build this sense of community to help those who feel paralysed from Covid fear.

There are lots of people creating communities online to bring us together and these are playing a crucial role in giving people the feeling of belonging. As I write this, it is nice to listen to the TV and feel part of the VE Day remembrance.

Highlighting such a traumatic time 75 years ago, and the fact we managed to get out the other end, somehow brings hope and positivity to our country at a time when we need it most.

In a time where we are all lacking physical connections, so to feel part of VE Day, especially for our elderly community is a very special moment.

As a nation and a world, it’s natural that we might be feeling a bit low currently.

This is a natural feeling and is linked to a hormone known as oxytocin, a chemical often referred to as the love hormone.

When we experience high levels of oxytocin, we generally feel better and are healthier.

But as this hormone comes from connecting with others, we might currently all be lacking some oxytocin – hence why we might be feeling a bit low some days.

How can we get more oxytocin when we can’t go about our normal life?

Just as our wartime compatriots connected in any way they knew how, we are lucky to live in a world where we can connect through technology.

There is no better example of this than what Mark Beaumont and Jenny Craig, who both hold world records for cycling around the world, put together from their homes with my old team-mates Steve Bate and Mel Nicolas.

It is called World In A Day, and it's a sporting community that has been built on the back of lockdown. After Steve told me about it and that he was getting up at 4am to cycle 240 miles on his turbo, I was very intrigued to find out more.

When I say intrigued, let me expand on that... I wasn’t physically intrigued to jump on a turbo and ride 240 miles, but I was keen to be part of the community.

The idea is to experience a day in the life of Mark's world-record cycle of doing 240 miles in one day.

However, this challenge has a slight twist. Unlike Mark's record-smashing effort, when he did it every day for 79 days on his own, this time he built a virtual peloton via Zoom where around another 100 riders and rowers joined to log their miles on their indoor trainers, all raising money for NHS charities.

As I joined the virtual peloton, the first thing I noticed was not just people cycling or rowing, but a group of people who had come together, with lots of conversation and people sharing stories.

A great example of creating a community to help others. It is certainly helping me. I joined the virtual peloton from the comfort of my sofa to chat with the team and share experiences to help them get through the day, and this week I ended up on for over three hours. The sense of community was incredible and it helped me get through a low day.