Days 4 & 5 - THINGS ARE GETTING BLURRY

The weekend was always going to be a difficult hurdle for me to vault. I chose not to raise my window blind on Saturday morning, and thanks to its substantial lining, I was able to deprive myself of natural light. Apart from my watch, my phone, my i-pad, my laptop, the TV, and the meals which Julia left outside the cell door I would have no means of knowing the passage of time over the next 48 hours.

My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness of my room, but the every day objects of my day to day existence cast vivid shadows on the wall. The neck of my tenor-saxophone became a swan, my desk lamp looked like a strutting peacock, and I discovered that if I stood my sno-globe on a toilet roll, it looked like an engorged phallus.

This sensory deprivation put me in mind of celebrity Chilean -Mario Sepulveda who on the 3rd August 2010, kissed good bye to his wife Maria and their three children, Mario Jr, Maria Jr, and baby Mario; he smiled as he picked up his lunchbox containing ‘Pastel de Choclo’, both his and Mario Jr’s favourite Chilean dish. Maria certainly knew how to look after him – not a supermarket microwave meal in sight.

(Before anyone asks – yes, the entire family are essentially called a variant of ‘Mario’ – this is not as uncommon as it may seem and happens throughout the world including an entire family of four called Frankie who live in Portsmouth).

What Mario didn’t know was that it wouldn’t be until the 25th October when he Mario, would once again be reunited with Maria, Mario, Mario and Maria. To make matters worse that evening Maria had planned to tell Mario that she was expecting their fourth child – Diego.

Mario was one of the ‘33’, the 33 Chilean miners who remained trapped underground for 80 days. Throughout that time, the darkness, the isolation, the claustrophobia, the unwelcome attention of his colleague Mario Gomez…… and the uncertainty of their escape, weighed heavily on Mario’s mind. The only thing that got him through it was knowing that Antonio Banderas would end up playing him in a $26 million Hollywood blockbuster; and obviously the prospect of meeting his unborn son Diego (whose name he changed to Mario)

This led me to think who will play me – in the movie of my incarceration. I have always felt, and it has been commented that Tom Hardy and I share more than a passing resemblance. When I am released from this hell I must find out from Julia who she would want to play me, I fear it would be Mike Tyson, but not for reasons of resemblance or artistic integrity. (see toilet roll and sno-globe reference)

Since Thursday I have been checking my phone in order to receive the formal notification of my ‘plague-status’. Given the excessively mild nature of my infection, I was starting to doubt whether I had actually got the disease. I imagined an Eastenders style Xmas day, where like Angie Watts in 1988 confessing to ‘Dirty Den’ that she didn’t really have cancer, I would have to tell everyone that had been on this journey with me, that has been there for me, that has microwaved a Ginsters Peppered-Steak bake and left it on a plate outside my door, that I’d got it wrong, and that there was in fact nothing wrong with me.

Having heard nothing by Saturday morning, I decided to consult the instructions which had been sent with my postal PCR test. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I had missed out a fundamental stage in the process – registering the test so they knew it was mine. Again my thoughts, as they have throughout this process, turned to others. To people who may not be able to read complicated instructions, to people who aren’t digitally literate and people like myself who employ people to read things on their behalf.

There followed a 40 mile round trip to the drive-thru test centre, which in itself is a feat of logistical brilliance. I was tested at 16.00 and by 12.00 today my worst fears/hopes were confirmed – I was one of the 83,602 people who have today been confirmed as having Coronavirus. I am a statistic that tonight will appear on the news – but I am not a statistic, I am a human being with a back-story, a future, I have emotions and vulnerabilities, I am not a number I am me – I am Paul. Hear me. Hear my story.