Blaise Tapp: Wouldn’t it be nice if we all just considered other people

After a freakishly warm start to the month, October ended in a 10 day downpour for large parts of the country, reminding us all that winter is fast approaching. The shorts are packed away until next March probably and the anoraks are hardly given enough time to dry out before they are thrown back on again.

The real giveaway, however, that the temperatures outside are dropping is the fact that nearly every person I know either has a cold or is on the long road to recovery from one. As recently as a year ago, the fact that loved ones or colleagues were getting through a box of mansize tissues at great speed would be a cause for alarm. But, for the first time in three-and-a-half years, you can now cough in confined spaces without a stranger fixing you with a death stare.

I recently spent four long hours trapped in an overcrowded train carriage where the awkward silence was punctuated by the type of persistent coughs we were once so wary of, not to mention the nauseating sound of various people clearing their throats.

It did cross my mind that some of my unwell fellow travellers might have Covid but what was I going to do - lock myself in the train’s loo for 200 odd miles or get off at Stafford and wait for the next jam packed train to take me home?

Like the majority of the population, it wasn’t that long ago that I would feel that I had some protection from other people’s germs by wearing a face mask, which a significant number continued to wear for a while after it stopped being mandatory.

Covid is no longer the emergency it once was but, like we were told, it hasn’t gone away and people are still dying with it, although in far smaller numbers than they once were. But, you would’ve thought that society might have learned its lesson and that we would all exercise the caution that we once showed in abundance.

The memories of the bleakest period in recent history clearly aren’t enough to stop many from thinking of only themselves.