AND FINALLY We’re itching to make the Great Escape!

ALMOST March, almost March — and may those famous winds blow us out of damn lockdown sooner than Boris and the boffins say. Always a rebellious schoolgirl, then a perpetually questioning adult, now in my glorious, heel-kicking 70s I find I still want to kick down doors, crying ‘Freedom!’

Spring gets you that way. The PM gave us a ‘crocus of hope’ — and I thought, ‘Only one, Boris?’

We’ve got plenty in our garden and they’re nodding their own golden heads, bidding me to start real life again.

I want to get on a train to London, walk into the Daily Mail office, see colleagues, go to a cool restaurant for lunch (the one I love is called The Wolseley), pop into a shop and try on dresses...oh, you know the kind of thing.

It’s not that I did that very often in pre-lockdown times — because I love our quiet life in the country. But I need choice. So I doubt I’ll be actually waiting for Big Daddy to tell me I can go out, as if I were a kid begging to stay up late.

One of the driving philosophies of this column (from its beginning in 2007) has been that all of us have agency — in other words, we can take control of our lives.

I’ve never said it’s easy (on the contrary), just that when we believe it’s possible, when we tell ourselves life is short, when we assert our power to change . . . why then we can start to be our best selves.

‘Seize the time’ was a rallying cry when I was a student. Ageing and death reminds you of its urgency.

So now, like millions of others, I’m itching for the Great Escape. And, frankly, I’ve never needed young Matt Hancock’s permission to see my family.

Who’s going to wait for somebody else to open the door? Common sense and an independent spirit tell this vaccinated old rebel that Spring has sprung — and so we should spring ourselves from chokey.

Where’s Steve McQueen when I need him?

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 WaterlooStreet, Glasgow G2 6DB, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.