The pressure to ease the steel-like grip of lockdown is almost irresistible. Governments are desperate to make progress and limit the devastating impact on the economy that has resulted from this dreadful virus.

State leaders are also acutely aware of the need to keep the population “on side” and “on message” with compliance to their guidance, at a time when early signs show twitchiness on the faces of the people.

It’s a truly difficult balancing act that is dependent on so many factors ranging from damage limitation to education, jobs and prosperity (or lack of) in years to come, to preparedness for living with a new wave of infections – and ultimately more lives lost at a time when already we have the unenviable status of recording more deaths per head of population than any other European nation.

These are indeed heady matters that need to be decided among our heads of state and those within the inner circle of Cobra.

Meantime, I know that a few of my neighbours are starting to edge a little closer to each other for a chin-wag when cutting their grass or washing their cars. I don’t cross the door and neither does my wife – we are in category one shielding mode so behind glass is as close as we get to having a chat with a relative when they come to drop off a gluten-free tiger loaf or some other wee treat to brighten up our day.

I do, however, see changes happening in my general behaviour and mood. I am less interested in the latest box series on Netflix. I can’t be bothered looking through the lists of available films. I am getting a little frayed around the edges and as treatment continues I am becoming weary of the side-effects and how they affect me. It’s taking a lot longer to read the pages of my latest wonderful Amor Towles book, Rules Of Civility.

My sister is also reading one of this fine author’s books (A Gentleman In Moscow) and finds concentration difficult. To cheer her up I borrowed a recent snippet from The Herald Diary and told her I had found a book I just couldn’t put down. When she excitedly asked me what it was about, I replied: “The phenomenon of anti-gravity … I just can’t put it down.” At least I made her smile.

But it’s getting more difficult to keep smiling. That’s why VE Day on Friday was such a brilliant boost to me and many millions of us. It’s about remembering that times can be tough but we’ll get through them. It makes us listen to stories from a time when being together and caring about each other was all there was.

It does seem that life, although politically unstable and deadly back then, was simpler in many respects. That people had a more straightforward view of what was important.

There are similarities to what is happening in our communities today since Covid-19 became such an all-consuming factor in our lives.

So, as things start to take small steps back to “normal”, we will see things change – but perhaps not for the better.

During this next phase we’ll see more analysis and criticism of how things have been handled. Interviewers and sideline snipers will feel reinvigorated by the rekindling of a blame culture … of the need to hang someone out to dry.

Piers Morgan, as ITV's breakfast TV attack dog on Good Morning Britain, never changed since day one. And while I don’t want a toothless media anchor, neither do I wish everything to be presented as a shock, an investigation, a revelation or an expose – and every figure in authority presented as a target to be battered and torn and scarred and disrespected.

So while we remember to “Never Forget” those who gave their lives in the war we should also never forget that in the past two months we have experienced what it is like to really care more about each other and show more compassion and empathy – not to mention the drastic reductions in pollution, and more appreciation of natural beauty, nature and the environment.

As part of my own tributes to VE Day I looked out an old photograph of my dad – George McLaws – who served with the RAF in the Far East (Singapore, Java and Ceylon), and my mum – Olive Blair McGuff , who was a volunteer auxiliary nurse at Killearn Hospital looking after injured troops. She was inspired to train and qualify as a state-registered nurse at Glasgow’s Western Infirmary immediately after the war.

I don’t think their glass was half-empty or half-full during those war years. I don’t think my glass is half-empty or half-full going through chemotherapy treatment amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Perhaps they, like me, just thought the glass was the wrong size.