IN my idle moments, and there have been a few of those in the last couple of months, I’ve found myself imagining where I might go to first when the lockdown is over. I mean, after I’ve hugged friends and family and reminded myself what cinemas and bookshops looks like.

In my head I have pictured myself on the Number 28 tram cutting through the narrow, shabby-chic, streets of Lisbon, or wandering down London’s South Bank past the Globe Theatre and on towards Tate Modern, or sitting in a café in Palma or Paris (never been, actually), or walking across the Rialto bridge in Venice

And then I come to and wonder if I’ll ever go abroad again.

The temptation right now is to assume that eventually everything will go back to normal. That the pandemic will pass, and life will return to how it was before. And maybe it will. But the truth is we don’t know that yet. We hope a vaccine will be found, but, until it is, short-haul and long-haul travel are – or at least should be – a thing of the past.

Not one of us is going on a summer holiday this year, let’s face it. The UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested this week that they are “likely” to be cancelled. I don’t think we need the qualifier. We are nearly halfway through May already, after all.

Meanwhile, holiday operator Tui has warned of 8,000 job losses as the whole travel sector remains in a state of uncertainty. Even if everything does eventually go back to some semblance of normality, how long before the industry is back in a position to provide holidays? And how many of us will be still in jobs and be able to afford them?

And, of course, the elephant in the room is climate change. Even if we do get back to what we used to call “normal”, should we? Because, unless you are a Trumpian denialist (and I’m hoping that blowhard contrarianism has less and less traction in a world that has been pummelled by coronavirus), the fact is we are not getting to grips with one of the major threats to what we call "normal".

This week scientists announced that there was a possibility that El Nino weather patterns could be reactivated in the Indian Ocean after being dormant for more than 20,000 years. The cause? Increasing greenhouse gases.

Perhaps we should take this pause as a chance to rethink our priorities. I would love to see Venice again, but I guess I want any grandchildren I might have to have the chance to see it too. The question is, what will it take from us to ensure that that remains a possibility?