So the Liverpool City Region, which includes Wirral, will remain in Tier 2 after Christmas Day, while Cheshire and Warrington moves into Tier 3 - which means it is possible to drive a couple of minutes from Heswall centre and enter another Tier and its tighter restrictions, and vice versa.

The changes come into effect at one minute past midnight on Boxing Day.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock, at this afternoon's coronavirus press conference, explained that part of the City Region's success in suppressing the virus is due to recent mass testing in Liverpool which identified in particular asymptomatic people who were carrying the virus but otherwise fit and well.

This kind of testing is available to us at Greasby Library and other hubs, along with tests at Heswall Library for those who DO have symptoms.

Details of no symptom testing and how to get one can be found here.

If you are experiencing symptoms click or tap here.

Staying in Tier 2 no doubt triggered sighs of relief across our district - at least the constraints under which we are obliged to live permit activities that feel a little like normality.

But the tone of today's press conference suggested that, despite the ongoing roll out of vaccination, things are going to get worse before they get better.

A national 'Tier 4 lockdown' has an air of inevitability about it.

We were already aware of one virus variant accelerating infections in London and the South East; now the new 'South African' mutation came under our collective microscope as we watched or listened to the briefing - a variant which apparently brings with it another threat in terms of increased transmissibility.

Tiers apart, today the message for us all remained the same no matter where we live.

Play by all the rules, limit social contact on Christmas Day, get a test if you can, and take the vaccine when you are offered it.

This will be the oddest Christmas, but we can do our best to make it a safe one, and hope that, at some point in 2021, our lives will return to something like normal.