IN February 2020 I quit my job as Head of Communications and Research for the SNP at Holyrood. I still loved it, I loved my colleagues, I loved the daily excitement of walking through the Garden Lobby to face whatever the day held.

But after a busy eight years working for the party it was time for a change. ­Cutting loose without a new job raised a few ­eyebrows, but it felt liberating: a world of opportunity opening up to me and some well-earned time off to consider options.

First port of call was a trip to Switzerland to visit a good pal, who conveniently worked in one of Europe’s best ski resorts. The conditions were glorious, a foot or so of fresh powder in advance of my visit was what I cared most about rather than the increasingly tedious headlines about an “H1N1-type flu” emerging in Asia.

Within a couple of days of my visit the chatter had turned to the troubling ­incidence of this new coronavirus just over the St Bernard’s pass in Italy. The first deaths in Europe were reported. That same day I was suspended for more time than advisable in a cable car with some spluttering Italian snowboarders, all of us heading to reach the best slopes.

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A few days later, en route home to ­Scotland, I was sweating, breathless, ­unwell and convinced — lugging my ­suitcase through Geneva Airport — that I was afflicted merely with a hangover from hell and that those donning facemasks were overcautious weirdos.

A week later I was at a sold-out ­Murrayfield, packed in with 67,143 ­others, to watch Scotland soundly thump France in the Six Nations. Celebrations followed with a forgettable number of drinks in a forgettable number of ­Edinburgh ­watering holes.

Two weekends after that, a trip to Skye for the other half’s birthday went ahead. It was long in the planning and, ­unusually for March, wasn’t set to be ruined by me in the throes of running an election ­campaign. And so to beautiful Dunvegan we ventured and had a brilliant ­weekend, catching the ferry from Armadale to ­Mallaig on the way home.

“STAY IN YOUR CAR FOR THE ­DURATION OF THE CROSSING TO PROTECT OUR STAFF AND FELLOW PASSENGERS”, read CalMac’s officious notice.

Sunday lunch at a friend’s in Arisaig topped off a near perfect trip. Though the increasing doomsdayism on the ­radio made the welcome hugs slightly ­awkward and uncertain upon arrival. Lunch done, we scrambled up the craggy Druim ­Fiaclach, gazing out to the Small Isles to the west, lit in amber by the plunging March sun, and eastwards to the sturdy snow-capped peaks of Lochaber.

Instagram gold, and duly uploaded. #NoFilter.

Minutes later Scotland’s newly ­ensconced Finance Secretary, MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, and friend Kate Forbes messaged to say “I hope you’ve not come to my constituency to self-isolate like all those townies”. It was a jokey serious reprimand.

Matt, our host, generously offered us a room to stay until “all this nonsense blows over”. We thought better of it and headed home, sparing him unwanted lodgers for several months.

All of the above seemed normal at the time. But, by the standards of the ­war-weary 21 months into a pandemic, now sounds completely insane.

That same weekend the First Minister warned “we cannot just carry on as ­normal — life, right now, is not normal. Let us not look back in a few weeks and wish that we had done more to protect ourselves and each other”. She continued, “the time to act is now”.

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Within 48 hours, in a statement to ­Holyrood, Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that the only permissible reasons to leave home were to shop for basic necessities, to exercise once a day, for medical ­reasons or to travel for essential work.

In April 2020, locked down in ­Edinburgh, I was still relishing the ­novelty to some extent. I was piping at the flat window on Thursday nights for NHS workers and Zoom catch-ups and quizzes with friends were still helping to maintain sanity — half of them laughing about this newfound “furlough” paradise which paid their rent without the ­inconvenience of having to work. I got fitter, using my hour-a-day freedom for a 5km run, though tempered the gains by pouring the first drink earlier each day.

I laughed a manic, guilty laugh when, during one of my “permitted hour of ­exercise” outings, a busybody neighbour asked if I was taking my book for a walk — at that stage, sitting on a park bench in the sunshine wasn’t an “essential reason” to be outdoors.

On a few sneaky occasions, I happened upon the same takeaway coffee stop, next to the same park, for the same hour’s walk with a friend who was doing the same routine at the same time, to save us from selfsame mutual insanity.

THERE have been plenty of column inches written about the experience of that first lockdown and what we all thought the “new normal” had in store during that period of isolation and considered self-reflection. But at least that May there was plenty of hope that, come autumn, we would be out of the woods and back to some semblance of living.

Tholing the restrictions in 2020 meant freedom in 2021. Or so we thought.

Christmas that year we plunged back into lockdown for what seemed an ­eternity. Between those constrained ­festivities and Easter Sunday alone more than 3500 people in Scotland would die of Covid-19.

The National: Traffic is directed at a Covid-19 Test Site at Edinburgh Airport , Scotland, where people have been asked to reduce their social contact as much as possible by meeting in groups of no more than three households. Picture date: Thursday December 30, 2021.

Among them my own grandfather. He was 96, had lived a full and fascinating life. None of us blamed the knackered care home staff who had done everything to keep him and my 93-year-old granny safe. Both tested positive for Covid. She lived, he didn’t pull through.

The funeral, capped at 20, was an ­unremarkable church sendoff for a ­remarkable man — but made all the more comforting by the throngs of extended family, friends and well-wishers who lined the streets outside to bid their goodbyes, against the rules.

At the crematorium, after piping a ­final goodbye to grandad, I gave my mum a huge tearful hug for the first time in a year. That too was against the rules. But I didn’t care.

My past 21 months aren’t atypical: ­blissful normality shattered by ­lockdown, frustration, loss, hope, hopelessness, straying from the rules here and there ­because we err, we lapse, we let our ­nature take the better of us.

It has been a longer slog than anyone would have hoped, for longer than we were led to believe we would have to ­endure and — at this stage in a ­pandemic — far longer than many of us wish to bear with.

The doom loop of new variants ­frustrates us now, perhaps more than at any point during this pandemic. It still scares the living daylights out of the old, the frail the vulnerable. It stymies the ­opportunities and dreams of the young and eager. Especially when, with protective vaccines, passes, testing and contact tracing, we thought we had all the ­requisite tools to handle the job.

But as we move from pandemic to ­endemic Covid, to a world where the ­virus is never eliminated, there are lessons for the year ahead for those that govern and for those who are governed.

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Reactive government policy of the past 21 months has been centred upon protecting our NHS. Proactive resilience to the ongoing pressure and future challenges must come in the form of transforming our health and care services into something far bigger and better in capacity and scope for dealing with the onslaught of what may be heading our way in years to come. For Scotland, it’s increasingly clear we cannot do that within in a fixed ­budget and a constrained fiscal framework. A more compelling case for independence it is hard to put a finger on right now.

For the rest of us, those who want to see 2022 defined by seeing friends, going out, dancing, partying, enjoying live music, supporting our local football team, we’re not asking for the earth. It’s nothing monstrous to long for normality, nor is it selfish to rail frustratedly at the powers that be in denying us all of this. It’s not wrong to ask with increasing impatience how and when we can get reach a place where we can enjoy ourselves once more. It is fundamentally human.