When I started to feel achy and shivery on the morning of November 24, the worry was, have I got Covid?

I’d done a lateral flow test in the morning but it was “negative”……so I thought. On returning home and taking another look, there was an extra bar on the test device.

Lesson One. Make sure you give it a full half an hour before concluding you are okay. A swiftly organised PCR test followed, but even before the result came through the following day, I just knew.

The aches and the shivers were greater, and the text message and e-mail the following day merely confirmed my fears. So began 10 days literally in isolation, to try to avoid my wife Ailsa getting it, as she was still showing negative and had no symptoms.

Thus, I became one of now almost 11 million people in the UK who have now had Covid, and what I also feel is that anyone I know who has been affected has not necessarily been affected in the same way.

For me, I am pleased to say, breathing wasn’t an issue, but overwhelming tiredness was soon added to by a complete loss of taste and smell.

Of course, being laid low like this brings your routines to a halt. No work for seven days, no going out at all. Hence, having to rally my fellow volunteers to cover the Full English Breakfast Show on Black Cat Radio. And they did a fine job.

Nevertheless, much rested and feeling far better, I returned on December 6, although still without taste or smell.

When you have worked with numbers for much of your professional career, you pore over them. As of Monday December 13, 86 per cent of people, aged 12 and over in our area have had the first dose of the vaccine.

Up to December 9, 80 per cent have had the second dose. 39 per cent have had a booster or third dose. The scary thing to me is that this time last year, when we were about to go into a Christmas lockdown most of us were really keen to receive a vaccine. It seems that one year on, 11 per cent have had no jab at all.

For my part, I believe my Covid symptoms were nowhere near as bad as they might have been and that's because I’d been jabbed?