Dear Reader

EACH to his or her own. While William Shatner was ecstatic about being propelled into orbit at the age of 90 (and absolutely no question of him filling out a Passenger Locator Form on his return), many millions of us were just as happy to hear the news that from next Friday we don’t need to take an expensive PCR test on arriving back from an overseas trip. A lateral flow one will do just fine.

Which is what some people have been saying for months. Indeed, according to the journal Clinical Epidemiology, the level of accuracy for lateral flow tests is far higher than the likes of Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has had us believe.

I suspect we’re trailing some distance behind the science rather than following it. And don’t expect the doing away with testing all together for the double-jabbed to come any day soon. Even so, it would be churlish not to concede that we’re moving in the right direction and that this could be a bumper half-term for families.

Then, yesterday, it was confirmed that from November 8 the drawbridge to America (New York, pictured) will open and we’ll be allowed in for the first time in nearly two years.

This should put a spring in the step of the head honchos at BA and Virgin Atlantic, for whom the transatlantic route is their financial bread and butter.

It’s funny how one’s travel wish-list has changed during the pandemic. Pre-Covid I had little desire to visit the U.S., but that’s not the case any more.

Blame it on watching so many American TV series (Succession, Virgin River, The White Lotus) during lockdown. Or just the realisation that despite the common lingo, the United States is far more of a foreign country than most of Europe.

On my last trip to the Big Apple, a taxi driver told me: ‘You know how in some countries it’s like watching a movie, well in New York it’s like being in the movie.’

Camera, lights, action — please.