In all fairness I would have been happy with a Thorntons egg with my name piped on it, but no, this year the Easter bunny went the extra mile and brought me a dose of Covid as an extra special treat and I became a woman in possession of a sick person’s bedside table.
Oh yes. For a day or two my bedside was preposterously piled high with all the accoutrements necessary to overnight survival when a person gets to feeling a tad weird but decides weird is her usual state of being so doesn’t think to test for the lurgy until Kath announces she has it and may just have passed it on. (Rude). And lo and behold there were two lines where there should have only been one and said person found herself confined to barracks and very cross indeed about it because apart from weird she felt tickety-boo and frankly outraged that such matters had put a stop to her rather enjoyable gallop.
So despite the ludicrously berserk brain-fog, I gave Covid-19 a very stern look. The kind that involved lowering my glasses and peering at it before threatening it with a barrage of Vitamin D, C, Zinc and should the worse come to the worst, three pints of mouthwash and if necessary, two bottles of bleach aka the Donald, because when push comes to infectious shove, I am a woman who takes no nonsense.
And all was well. And positive turned to negative really fast and I tested multiple times to make sure the darn thing really had left the building and then pretended I felt absolutely fine and agreed to go out and felt a bit hot and bothered while I was on said adventure and enjoyed it despite two glasses of wine going straight to my head, and losing my mind a little and probably smiling in deranged fashion, and the next day my nose felt like it was on fire and I was tireder than I have ever been in my entire life and I am a TIRED woman!
So another day was lost to sleeping and brain fog and eating toast because it seems to suddenly be the only thing my stomach can tolerate and now here I am. half-awake and still not feeling normal because it rather seems that that is what Covid does: it steals your normal and holds on to it like a spoilt child, refusing to give it back even when it is clear that the game is up.
For while tests show that I am no longer infectious, and my quarantine has passed, life has seen fit to reserve the worst of Covid for now. Today I feel borderline demented. My sinuses burning, my right eye twitching and my whole body aching. What’s all that about? I felt fine while I had it, and now I haven’t got it, I feel a little wretched, and while I want you imagine that wretched Alison is she who does a cracking impression of a swooning Victorian drama queen, what it actually looks like is mad combination of Christmas pyjamas and eyebags, slipper socks and crazy lady up-do.
So here I am. Feeling odd. Not just because Covid came a calling but because I saw a photo on Facebook yesterday that called itself karma and made me feel desperately sad; Because I was woken in the dead of night by my phone vibrating and saw a message that discombobulated me; Because I’m absolutely rubbish at being sick and want to punch the lights out of it and instead swallow up the muddled hours in a swirl of YouTube and tea, for being ill has a person sleeping at midday and wide-awake at midnight and the exhaustion that causes is something of a vicious circle of wired energy and blind fatigue, so work feels impossible and who knows what promises I’m making to those who want them from me. Can one extrapolate themselves from agreements made when a person isn’t of sound mind?
So yeah. I want to feel normal. But I’m not. (Though honestly, some would argue that I could say that any day of the week). Turns out you can’t pretend Covid away, because it just won’t play ball damnit. Today then, a big son wandering bleary eyed around the house moaning about the lack of food in the full fridge and freezer, singularly oblivious to a Mother feeling ailed, and swinging her around the kitchen in the most wonderful of wild, happy dances whenever she shuffles in to monitor whatever mess he is making. A little lunch of more sourdough toast, because if you can’t eat badly when you are sick, then what pray tell, is the point? A phone that never stops bleeping. Weekend plans cancelled for a person has to do as she is told and REST, (otherwise the plans she is making for the next weekend may just go the same way), and of course a small bet on the Grand National because I am a Liverpool girl and if we don’t bet on a ridiculous horse race once a year then we probably stand a chance of losing our keys to the city.
Bloody Covid. That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Bloody Covid!
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