Three months into the New Normal, and I'm stocktaking.
My Covid19 test result came through today within 36 hours of collection. I do not have the virus.I knew I didn't have it: but faithfully recording every symptom on the App supplied by the research team at King's College, London, has got me tested twice in three weeks. In research, a negative result is as useful as a positive one, as eny fule no.*
The kit arrives from Amazon: a small flat-pack box, two plastic bags, one bio-sealed, a piece of absorbent material a long swab, a return label and a few bar-coded labels for identification purposes, a book of instructions, and a small test tube with about 10ml of fluid in it.
The testing ballet involves a deep poke at the back of the throat, a swipe round both tonsils, and a nose-gouging that goes so far up, I think I reached my brain. Hands are ritually washed on two occasions.
The challenge is in assembling the flat-pack box. The directions for the folding and tucking of it, which are more challenging than you can possibly imagine, are helpfully printed on the bottom of it. I have not mastered the art of holding a box at eye-level to read and fold simultaneously. I suspect I might.
As an introvert, missing out on the socialising has not been especially painful, though it will be a relief to get SOME back. There are meetings I chair that absolutely nobody appears to be missing, which is a lesson well-learned, and I get the Church all to myself, as I do the Health and Safety Checks, which is great, though I am mourning the loss of fellowship and Holy Communion.
The biggest sacrifice for the benefit of staying alive, is missing my family. I don't even want to write about it, except to say how amazing the reunions will be!
I have achieved many small things. I fixed my old Singer sewing machine, if temporarily, as the tension's gone to pot again. I made a banner for Church, I set up a website for Newent Labour Party, sort of paying it forward, as I haven't posted anything on it for weeks ..., I finished a baby jacket I started decades ago, and abandoned on dropping a stitch, and I have begun a new hobby:making sweets.
I spend fine days in the garden. I have grown rhubarb from seed, peppers (from shop-bought ones) and sunflowers (from birdseed) are coming on too. The experiment of growing potatoes in a bucket isn't doing too well, as the plants are 'going home'as my dear mum used to say of artefacts that are not going to make it. My bramble patch is doing well, ie growing through the honeysuckle, and the perennial alpine strawberries are thriving too. I miss the strawberry hunts I had with Sam last year, and two years before that. Next year.
Wet days, I binge-watch stuff on the tv. Ray and I have worked our way through Wallender, Doc Martin and Belgravia.
i am rather ashamed of the fact that I haven't made a better fist of recording, 'What I Did During The Pandemic', in the manner of Samuel Pepys. (Did he ever get to dig up the Parmesan Cheese he buried in his garden whilst fleeing the Fire of London? I must Google it ...)
like all bad things, this too will pass. In 1954 Gary Salisbury, my playmate and next-door neighbour, died of polio. I have to remind myself, in the midst of this, that mine is the first generation that have lived,until now, without a plague. People lived, people died, then some kind of normality returned until the pestilence returned. So be it.
* Nigel Molesworth. Gold star if you placed it.
A Poem: Midsummer Moon
