On a walk through the west end this weekend, I witnessed a truly heinous sight. You may need to sit down for this one.

There were teenagers in Kelvingrove Park. Hundreds of them, laughing and having a good time. I think some of them might even have been drunk.

Of course, my first thought was someone should call the police. Except the park was already awash with officers. Nine out of 16 gates to Kelvingrove were padlocked shut, the logic being that this would make it harder to smuggle booze into the park. You think these kids have never been to a music festival?

It took me back to the days where I would fill an old Lucozade bottle up with vodka and go drinking in the grounds of my old primary school (sorry, mum). I wasn’t contending with the global outbreak of a deadly virus or anything: I was just a daft, bored kid.

Of course, young people taking carry-outs to the park on a warm, sunny day is nothing new. But, in this miserable pandemic time, it has become the latest target of pent-up frustration.

But if you are one of those people champing at the bit to “get back to normal”, how angry can you really be at a few teenagers getting sloshed in a public park?

At a time where public health messaging can be summed up as outdoors good, indoors bad, I am surprised by the outrage – and the news billing it was given by the likes of the BBC, thanks in part to boasting from Police Scotland: 400 youths were turned away for trying to bring alcohol into Kelvingrove Park the weekend before last, the force’s comms unit said, in a futile bid to deter them this weekend gone.

It worked, in part. A few of the teenagers went to Glasgow Green instead.

In an unthinkable 12 months, there has been a lot of anger and nowhere to really put it. But young people have really been given a kicking over the course of the pandemic.

Schools have been closed and reopened and closed again, exams have been scrapped and big question marks hang over higher education prospects for senior pupils.

Those who did take up a place in higher education spent their Freshers Weeks effectively locked in their halls of residence and forced to attend most of their classes via Zoom, while still being expected to show up to work in retail and hospitality jobs.

Those same jobs that, because of the need for repeated lockdowns, ensured that those under the age of 35 were bearing the brunt of a Covid employment crisis.

It has been a long, unforgiving year and, as we limp out the other side, it is hard to applaud the heavy policing of young people cracking open a few cans in the park.

But it is impossible to support the social media sneering because the residents of Park Circus are put off by a few lairy teenagers enjoying a sunny weekend.

Lighten up, would you?