I have to confess I am of a certain age.

When I was growing up, vaccines had not been developed against measles, mumps and rubella (it was called German measles when I was a child) and as a result there was always a likelihood I would catch one or more of those illnesses.

Measles and mumps were endemic. Parents knew with absolute certainty their children would catch one or both of them at some point.

Needless to say, I contracted both illnesses when I was a little boy. I can vividly remember being ill with measles, lying on the sofa for what seemed like days on end with the curtains drawn – one of the symptoms of measles can be a sensitivity to light.

Measles can also be fatal but I was lucky and well cared for. I eventually recovered without any lasting side-effects.

And yes, I also had mumps. At one point I looked like a hamster that had just fed well and stuffed his pouches. It was painful, uncomfortable but ran its course and everything was fine.

German measles, however, was a whole different matter. I was an adult when I contracted it and it hit me hard.

Not only did I have the classic fever and flu-like symptoms really badly, it also affected the joints in my fingers, wrists and ankles.

I couldn’t hold anything, I couldn’t stand or walk and I had to slide down the stairs on my backside.

And back in the day, children were routinely vaccinated against TB. That was the dreaded injection.

Invariably, the injection site scabbed over and we weren’t allowed to go swimming until it healed. For some unlucky souls, they had a poor reaction to the injection and it took months for the scab to heal. Having your TB injection really was a rite of passage that I note doesn’t happen any more.

For the majority of people, those so-called childhood illnesses were nothing more serious than a week or two of feeling poorly but the world owes a debt of gratitude to the scientists who invented the vaccines that have all but eradicated those diseases and many others.

Which brings me on to the hot topic of the Covid-19 vaccines in their various forms.

Looking at the information put out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, I should be in the fifth wave of vaccinations (told you I was old), and frankly it can’t come soon enough.

If the NHS told me I could have the vaccine but I’d need to drive 100 miles and the only slot available was at 4am on Christmas Day, I would be there without hesitation.

I just want to start feeling safe again.

I have listened to the experts and their explanations about why the coronavirus vaccine is safe and how they have been invented, tested and manufactured in under a year when normally the process would take between five and 10 years.

If Deputy Chief Medical Officer Prof Jonathan Van-Tam tells me it is safe and that he’s encouraging his mum to have the jab, that’s good enough for me.

I’ll be completely honest with you, I want the vaccine (preferably the Pfizer-BioNTech one although the Oxford University-AstraZeneca one will do at a push) for purely selfish reasons – I don’t want to get coronavirus – and I want everyone else to have it for exactly the same reason.

I want life to get back to some sort of normality. The feeling of ennui is becoming almost overwhelming and I need something to look forward to. That comes when the roll-out of the vaccine gives us the much-maligned herd immunity.

It’s sad and disappointing then that there seems to be a significant minority who don’t want to be vaccinated.

According to a report in The Guardian, a survey by University College London of 70,000 people conducted before ‘Lockdown 2’ revealed a fifth are likely to refuse a Covid vaccine and it found that 29 per cent considered themselves “very likely” to get vaccinated, while 10 per cent said they were “very unlikely”.

More than half (53 per cent) believed to varying degrees that vaccines can cause unforeseen effects. Nearly a third (30 per cent) believed there could be future problems for adults or children that were as yet unknown.

More than a third (38 per cent) thought natural immunity – from having the infection and recovering – was better than immunity from vaccines. A small minority (4 per cent) said they did not believe vaccines offered protection.

A quarter were deeply suspicious of pharmaceutical companies, believing that vaccines are used in “commercial profiteering”, while 4 per cent strongly believed that vaccination programmes were a con by pharmaceutical companies and authorities who are promoting vaccination for financial gain.

Fair enough, people are entitled to their views no matter how whacky and nonsensical they are. They also have the absolute right to control what goes in their bodies. But I just wonder if in a couple of months, you can’t go to the pub, to a restaurant, book a flight or go to the cinema unless you can prove you have been vaccinated against Covid-19, maybe people will change their minds.

It will be interesting to see what happens.