Rona Dougall: If the new normal is my husband making cheese in his dressing gown, you can keep it

Wherever I turn he seems to be there. Hanging around by the kettle, filling it too full for his single cup of tea. Sprawled on the sofa. I catch him in my eyeline chopping logs in the garden. And the other day I found him in the kitchen making cheese in his dressing gown.

That was it, the final straw. Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey, when will my husband go back to the office?

Right, I feel marginally better having got that off my chest. But it can’t just be me that’s had enough of their loved ones “working from home”? My howls of frustration must resonate with lots of people. I mean, I like my husband, he’s a nice man and a good cook, but I don’t want to see his face 24/7. And he mine, no doubt.

The pandemic turned our world upside down and as everything starts to settle down we’re all trying to find a new normal. The idea of working five days a week in an office now seems outdated. In fact an Edinburgh firm is showing us the future here. This week Vault City Brewing announced that it was adopting a four-day working week, making it the first business of its kind to do so in the UK.

The brewery has been trialling the shorter week since last year and is now making it permanent. Staff say the flexible hours make them more productive. Fewer hours, same money? I’ll raise a glass to that.

At the beginning of the month, the Scottish Government said employees should start to return to work in a hybrid sense.

And business groups have welcomed this, saying it will help revive city centres, which have been so hard hit in the last couple of years.

Just walk along the streets in any Scottish town and you see the evidence; shop windows shuttered, doors bolted and livelihoods ruined.

But for many people it will be hard to return to the office, even on a part-time basis. Lots of us will miss not having to deal with a gruelling daily commute. Is there anything nicer than waking to the sound of torrential rain and realising with a flash of pleasure that you don’t have to venture out in it? And the joy of round-the-clock pyjama wearing cannot be underestimated.

It’s been a blessed relief over the last two years for me to be able to escape the house and all those who live there and head to the studio. I’m sure they were very relieved to get shot of me too. I like the people I work with and I like the plentiful supply of biscuits.

But there are quite a few surveys which suggest many workers will have to be brought back to the office kicking and screaming. They’ve had a taste of paradise and for them there’s no going back.

Many of my colleagues have been returning to work in the last few days. They appear slightly dazed and apprehensive as they emerge blinking into the light.

But most people I’ve been chatting to are relieved to be back and happy to have some proper water cooler chat. You can only bang on about your Wordle score to your cat for so long I guess.

As a television presenter, life has pretty much carried on as normal for me, apart from the occasional forward planning meeting on Zoom. I thoroughly enjoyed them after making the game-changing discovery early-on that I could just turn the camera off and go hang my washing up when my attention wandered.

What does it say about me though that no one appeared to notice I was gone?