Reading about a remarkable woman who had recently died, I came across a description of her in old age as “a most youthful elderly person”. I am putting my obituary writers on notice: please do not use any such term to describe me.

So, here we are, back in what is looking like an indefinite lockdown: an old retired couple basically confined to our apartment barring a daily walk, and taking every precaution, from masking up to keeping safe distance as we wait for our next AstraZeneca jab.

As we face at least another four weeks of lockdown the phrase “worse things happen at sea” springs to mind. And it is particularly relevant now, I think, to Australians in the intermittent grip of waves of variants of COVID-19 and accompanying lockdowns.