It’s time. Slowly and with resolve I close my bedroom window upstairs and walk down the steps into the hallway. It’s been a while. I open the front door. The world is at my feet.

But like so many around me and around the world, I look to the left and to the right and I wonder: Is this what I want? In almost four months I’ve seen acts of human kindness positively overflowing, enough to fill that half-empty glass many times over. Among neighbours who clap and share meals… With family who have kept us afloat with online birthday and engagement parties (who’s zoomin’ who?) … Among many colleagues, fellow tourist guides, whose profound knowledge and bright ideas during lockdown have left me mesmerised and speechless (which is no mean feat) … With the rangers, council workers on secondment and fellow volunteers in Victoria Park who have taught me the tricks of domination… Am I ready to trade the new normal – the slowness, the freedom from social pretence, the lack of deadlines – back for the old one?

I’m looking out the window to the street below. One of those annoying yappy dogs is dragging its owner on an exceptionally long leash. Everything about it bugs me, including its colouring (which, by the way, matches the oblivious owner’s hair). ‘That dog has a brown head and a black body,’ I hear a voice say. I jump and turn but see no one. But I know who is speaking.

William Wolfbaer Rothschild came along with my husband, Mike. Part of the package and how not? He was his father. Cool middle name, huh? I sort of thought it matched him as well as that dog’s fur did the owner’s hair. Different, weird, Germanic (his father apparently had eyes as blue and hair as blond as a Prussian’s). Mike didn’t think so, though – not the cool part. Isn’t that always the case? Parents embarrass kids at home while the outsiders can’t seem to get enough.

I would very much like to continue gazing out my window – front or back – but the views are, well, fairly restricted at the moment. Scaffolding has edged up to the top floor to the north and the south. Someone had the bright idea of using this time to have the window frames and the masonry painted, the rain-ravaged cills repaired. Oh, that was me? Ooops, never mind. With Carole King belting out at the mic, I go Up on the Roof.

It would be fun if my husband Michael Rothschild would join me, but he has no head for heights. Truth be known, we have a tremendous amount in common, sharing many interests and hobbies, but so too do we have things that are very much our own. The joys of classical music still manage to escape me; he can’t understand why I would spend the evening conjugating Breton verbs or declining Old English nouns. He gardens, I DIM (the ‘M’ is ‘myself’, FYI). He likes remaining on terra firma, I climb.