As we are surrounded by war-time analogies delivered by people who have never served in HM vineyards, nor fired a shot in righteous anger, I shall swerve saying that tapping this out on the tablet was becoming increasingly reminiscent of an old exercise I took part in using badly-formed morse code. (As an aside, The Reds won The Battle of Salisbury Plain and I was captured by some extremely aggressive horse-paras). As it was getting too tiresome, I arose, took a bath, scraped the fevered sweat off and have come down to my study.
It started on Sunday, after a visit to see Rory Bremner at The new Barn Theatre in Cirencester. As Rory rightly surmised he, and his fellow travellers, would all soon be out of work. The traditional fall back of the resting thesp was the caff or pub round the corner. But that is a non-starter and I hope they all manage. The cough kicked in on Monday and then disappeared. Tuesday the lead-weights and Tyson Fury punch-bag feeling arrived and I took to the bed. Today I am good for bursts of about 40 minutes before fatigue overcomes. The cough is not prevalent and the temperature is ½ degree higher than it should be – or was the last time we checked. Sadly the ear thermometer battery appears to have failed, as has every supermarket delivery service in the UK.
One of the few things to keep the ticker pounding away this AM, was the relentless oleaginous crap being spouted by various supermarket bosses. Get real guys. There are no deliveries for three weeks. There is no rice, dried pasta, tinned beans, dried anything on the shelves. Many of the sites are actually broken (or claiming to be). Fortunately Capt. Mac went out and got some bread and stuff, so the Plum Jam sarney is back on. There are good people ou there – unlike the vagabonds and cutthroats who snatched our chix some months ago. The Chix were to be replaced this weekend, but I feel that replacing them will be asking for trouble.
Oh yes, one other thing. THERE IS NO TESTING FOR COVID-19 unless you’re Idris Elba who paid £400 for it to be done, You phone 111. You press various numbers – and even if you press all worst-possible-case scenarios, you are advised to stay at home, “…as for many people the symptoms are mild and will pass”. We didn’t get to the gurgling, short of breath and eyeballs popping questionnaire – but even I know that’s 999, not 111. This government is beginning to look as though it doesn’t get the need to listen, heed, instruct and lead, not squirm, wash-hands, issue advisory and abdicate responsibility.
So, in short, COVID-19 is much like flu but kills you. Have I got it? Not a clue, it could be ordinary flu – or it could be the work of the devil. However, I will of course not hesitate to let 111 know if I’m dead, so they can maintain up-to-date data.