Covid for Christmas ... I’ll be glad when this terrible year is over
WITHOUT wishing to start some kind of ‘my Christmas was worse than your Christmas’ tit-for-tat debate, I think I have a fair shout in winning this one.
It began on December 24 as I sat in the public gallery at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court.
Having watched the first three defendants appear from custody, I could see my phone – which was on silent – ringing in my laptop bag.
Glancing down and noticing it was my wife, I left the room and answered it.
“I’ve tested positive,” were the three words which came down the line.
Knowing the drill, I gathered my belongings, walked through the city centre to the railway station and caught the train home, a mask very firmly on my face.
This, I should add, was around four hours after my 7am lateral flow test taken at home that morning showed me to be negative for Covid.
So what did all of this mean?
For one, our plans to visit my mother-in-law and take her out for Christmas dinner the following day were clearly out of the window, meaning she spent the day by herself.
Exiled in self-isolation also meant any other plans we had would have to be scuppered. Christmas Day passed in separate rooms in the house as we watched films apart rather than spending it with family or even together.
At around 6pm, the NHS sent confirmation to Mrs Naylor that her secondary PCR test confirmed what we already feared.
The authority contacted me on Boxing Day morning saying I didn’t need to self-isolate so I was at least free to travel to watch my football team play. Following a two-hour journey to Norfolk in the car, that match was called off because of a waterlogged pitch less than an hour before kick-off and I made the long, wet and depressing journey home. Monday morning and my daily test at home revealed the dreaded second red line.
I too was now positive. What made this all the more harder is that this day my sister and niece were travelling to see us with the purpose of us all going to the chosen place where my father, who died two months ago, wished for his ashes to be scattered.
Instead, I had to leave the box containing them on the front porch for my relatives – whose journey due to roadworks and other delays took five hours – to say our final farewell to my dad, without me.
We had already placed a notice on the front door advising those making deliveries that we were self-isolating.
It may as well be a cross daubed in red paint indicating we’re living in a plague house.
As I sit and type this I’m on what they call ‘day three’ and I’ve not smelled or tasted anything in the past two days.
Last night I became enraged watching footage of anti-vaxxers storming a Covid test centre in Milton Keynes and stealing some of the equipment.
I cannot leave the house until next week and only then if I provide the required negative tests.
2021 was easily the worst year of my life.
It is fair to say 2022 cannot come quickly enough for me.
Happy New Year, it cannot be any worse than the last one.
Christmas Day passed in separate rooms in the house as we watched films apart rather than spending it with family or even together.