If only the dilemma stopped at how many. Once you’ve ascertained that, you’re left with the nose-bumping/glasses-skewing dilemma of which side first? I discussed this with my friend Arnaud Barge, director of Arnaud’s ­Language Kitchen (he teaches English-speaking people French in the least terrifying way possible). Do you start with the left cheek or the right? “Which cheek to extend first? It’s right cheek first in three-quarters of France – the north, on a line from Biarritz to Nancy, but left cheek first in the south-east quarter.”

And also, what do you call it? Bisou, bécot, se faire un schmoutz, se boujouter? There are many regional variations. For example, schmoutz is used in the areas where, at the beginning of the 20th century, people spoke German dialects. Se boujouter is used in Normandy and it comes from boujou, a dialect word for bonjour.

But where did all this kissing come from? Along with aqueducts and excellent roads, it was the Romans who introduced the codified kiss to France. The osculum was a kiss between those of equivalent social rank; basium, a kiss between close friends (la bise); and ­saevium, an erotic kiss. Everyone kissed away for centuries, until in the 14th century the Black Death showed up to ruin everyone’s fun. Cap-doffing became the medieval equivalent of Covid-induced fist-bumping. Kissing slowly crept back in polite and not-so-polite society during the 20th century, reaching its zenith in the 1960s, as part of the phénomène du jeunisme, or the cult of youth. This is when men began kissing each other in social greeting, and it was no longer just the preserve of family members, female friends, and men with women.

However you faire la bise, there is one issue that is universally accepted: there must be no moisture, no dampness, no lips on cheeks. Cheeks brush each other lightly as you make the “mwah” noise, because though doing that can feel a little pretentious, doing it without the “mwah” just feels plain bizarre. Honestly, this is a comfort to me, after living for a while in Russia where even recent acquaintances would happily glide in for a Brezhnevian smacker on the lips.

Now we’ve all removed our masks, will the kissing return? In our local bar, a lot of the men have replaced the fist bump with the more traditional firm handshake. Many of the women greet each other with kisses. It feels normal.

But the return of la bise is not ­welcomed by everyone. A headline on Slate.fr reads: ‘Désolé, mais la bise va faire son retour’ (sorry, but the kiss is coming back). A survey by Aladom, ­published in Marie Claire magazine, indicated a large proportion of the ­population doesn’t intend to go back to their pre-mask kissing ways: 78 per cent say they’ll stop kissing strangers to introduce themselves, and 50 per cent will stop using it to greet family ­members, friends and colleagues.

For some, it’s not just the enforced intimacy, but the massive time suck. When meeting and leaving a large group of friends, the rounds of kissing can take ages, tempting me to filer à l’anglaise, that is, to sneak away ­unnoticed.

At work, this can be particularly frustrating. A segment on the France 24 news channel in 2019 explored the idea that la bise was a big waste of time. Six minutes a day kissing your colleagues hello and goodbye equates to two-and-a-half days a year. I think most would rather have the time in lieu. And this is before you even get to the gendered element of it all. In 2018, Aude Picard Wolff, mayor of Morette in the Auvergne, emailed her 73 municipal counsellors to say: “From now on, I would prefer to shake hands, like men do.”

There are signs that the extravagant bise is dying out. Arnaud says: “The quatre bises is disappearing fast, and is most common in the over-50s. As a rule, the younger you are, the fewer kisses you give!” When I ask him why, he says: “I fear that the American model of the ‘hello hug’ is taking over.”

Oh, le hug. In one of our first lessons, my French teacher, Diane, made it very clear that French people don’t hug, as though I were about to go into a swift embrace following our great success with the passé composé. They don’t even have a proper word for it. Câlin means cuddle, and while une étreinte can mean an embrace, it can also mean grip, seize or stranglehold. So – no doubt much to the annoyance of the Académie Française – many, especially the young, use le hug. Which will provide us all with something else to worry about, codify and explore, just as soon as we’ve sorted out la bise.