Stay alert, control the virus, eat a burger or ice cream and play some crazy golf in Southsea | Simon Carter

And it WAS fairly normal, in many ways a typical early summer weekend afternoon. If all you wanted to do was stroll along the prom, eat a burger, fish and chips or ice cream, and sit on the beach listening to the waves break. The sort of things we have always taken for granted, but in a world that now already seems a long time ago. We’re never going to take anything for granted ever again, though, if we have the slightest bit of common sense.

The waves carried on breaking, the gulls carried on circling, and there were a fair sprinkling of people doing exactly the same as my partner and I - simply walking or sat on the beach. But obviously some of the more familiar sounds of Southsea summer life had disappeared - there was no sound of leather on willow at the cricket ground - just an empty grass area whipping up a melancholy feeling for those who love cricket (as I do) - no music from the bandstand area, the big wheel was silent, and there was no laughter on Canoe Lake from those keen to hire a swan pedalo. They are the sounds of summer, but who knows when we will hear them again?

Possibly some of you reading this will criticise me for taking my stroll; after all, if everyone just fancied a walk by the sea it would create the sort of mass gathering that was rumoured to be taking place on the Common. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, after all. And, I’ll be honest, I was expecting to see hordes of people, possibly some large groups dismally failing to honour social distancing.

But I didn’t see any, I really didn’t. I’m not suggesting every single person on Portsea Island adhered strictly to government advice on Saturday afternoon, but I can only comment on what I saw. And what I saw was a lot of people using their common sense.

It has been easy to highlight the Covidiots during the pandemic - I know, I’ve done it myself - but for every stupid person there are many more sensible ones, and we will need the Great British public to use their common sense like never before if we are to usher in a fuller return to normality any time soon. But it can be done, I saw it with my own eyes.

People being sensible, queuing sensibly … I even spotted more than one group of teenagers sitting on a beach socially distancing (but in true teen style probably texting each other!) And I haven’t seen so many police in Portsmouth since Southampton visited in the League Cup last September. I have since discovered that was probably due to the supposed ‘mass gathering’ that, like many things on social media, are fake news. I even saw bobbies on bikes, for about the first time since I was growing up in East Devon in 1979.

I do not wish to paint a picture of everything being alright in the world just because we can now stroll by the sea in the sun and eat burgers. The fight to conquer the virus will be a long and painful one. Thousands have died. More will die. They are brutal facts no-one can ignore.

But, for our mental health, we need to focus on the positives as well as the negatives, otherwise fear will just consume us all. I saw many positives on Saturday, and they are a start. All paths to recovery have to begin somewhere.