Day 2 - Reality Bites !!!!

My fears of a night of fevered, COVID ravaged nightmares didn’t come to fruition. There was a moment of ‘half-sleep’ when I thought I had enraged the Corona-demons, and in their anger they were causing my bed to move (in not quite as dramatic effect as the Exorcist); but upon investigation I discovered I hadn’t ‘locked out’ one of the folding legs that transforms my already uncomfortable sofa into an even more uncomfortable bed.

Once I had established a stable platform I was able to sleep accompanied by my now loyal companion Rocco – the kitten.

I awoke and for the most fleeting moment imagined a guard staring through a flap in the cell door. In almost the same moment the initial novelty of self-isolation gave way to a feeling of misery, again my mind turned to celebrity prisoners – people who had been living life on the crest of a wave, but whose hopes and aspirations had crashed onto the beaches of despair. Ken Dodd, Lester Piggot, Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris, became my momentary cell mates as I wallowed in what I imagined would be my first but not last, fleeting moment of despondency.

I needed a lift and my first meeting of the day was with Steve. He’s badged as one of life’s good guys, he is Welsh which on it’s own doesn’t elevate his status or bless him with empathy, but he has a kindly face (although somewhat plain). Above all he was part of the ever-growing COVID victims club; a survivor who had worked through his illness with a dignified stoicism (although he did have to take time off work). I was also aware that Steve like other survivors hadn’t suffered the ‘mild symptoms’ it refers to in the brochure. He’d had it tough. But I knew he’d lift me from my gloom with words of warmth and reassurance.

“You look worse than yesterday” was his opening gambit. It was like a well-timed left hook that had hit my unguarded chin, but to be doubly sure as I buckled, he followed it up fast and hard with a blow to the body “But you’re only on day four, which is when it goes downhill…….. fast”

Suddenly his soothing Welsh accent started to jar, it became the angry Welsh voices of the leek brandishing nationalists that used to burn down peoples holiday cottages; it was Neil Kinnock shouting down the dissenters at the 1985 Labour party conference in Bournemouth, it was Ryan Giggs explaining to his brother what he’d done with his missus.

I couldn’t wait for the call to end, but then spent the day lurching from meeting to meeting where COVID victims regaled me with stories of chest tightening, phlegm, and steroids.

“…Tommy who’s a lot fitter than you is on steroids”

“I wasn’t too bad…………………………….. but my husband contracted pneumonia and his lung collapsed”

“… Tommy who’s a lot fitter than you ended up in hospital”

“…Have you got to the point where you’re passing blood yet?”

“My Uncle Derek filled a milk pan every night” (In the spirit of good taste and decency, I won’t elaborate with what, but it wasn’t semi-skimmed or mushroom soup)

I have now established a new purpose to promote the positives of self-isolation, within the misery of it all, to try and find one positive each day.

Positive self-isolation fact 1 – 16/12/2021

· I have reconnected with “The World’s Strongest Man”. (Channel 5 8.00 pm)

But despite this glimmer of light in a world of darkness – I’m still sat here at nine o’clock choosing between the nauseatingly, twattish banter and gut wrenching bonhomie of “Gordon, Gino, and Fred’s Road Trip” or “Masterchef The Professionals” cooking food I can neither taste nor smell, nor would actually want to eat.

But above all - I’m missing Jules. Even though she’s sat downstairs – we can’t laugh at the cats together, we can’t comment like a pair of Goggle-boxers about the television, and she can’t shout at me, when I clumsily knock over a glass of wine and break a glass (nightly occurrence). Its really tough, and whilst I know that she loves it when I send her a text asking to bring something up to leave at my door, I can’t wait for her to be able to bring things to me and hand them to me in person again.

My over-arching priority (which isn’t self-preservation as that’s an instinct), is to make sure no-one else in the house is infected. As well as the measures implemented yesterday, I now have a plate and cutlery set allocated to me. Clearly this can’t be washed by an uninfected person and therefore I have to wash my own crockery in my own area. On the basis that we don’t have a kitchen (and will be unlikely to have one for a number of months due to me contracting COVID), I have been forced to wash my pots in my bathroom.

Even Rolf Harris hasn’t stooped this low.

Well he has – he’s stooped a lot lower, but I mean he doesn’t have to wash his pots in the shower.