Suspicious sniffles put chaos on the menu for family meals
It was my little brother’s birthday last week and we decided to celebrate. How best to do this? I’ve lost track of what’s allowed and what isn’t. Nine and a half people can gather in someone’s house so long as they were all born on a Tuesday and have a “J” in their name – something like that? In the end, it was decided that we’d congregate for a small dinner in my sister’s garden. I’d buy a ham and do some baked potatoes; my sister would bake a cake; Mum would drive up from Sussex for the evening, bringing her special coleslaw.
I find comparisons between this year and the war both irritating and wet. The majority of us have had five months of disruption and a slight panic about yeast; they had six years of fighting and a further nine years of rationing. Still, I went to a local deli with all the enthusiasm of a wartime housewife who’d been storing up coupons to buy posh crisps, hummus and wine.
After a queue outside the butcher’s, I strapped the ham into my passenger seat so no harm could befall it on the drive to Brixton. It felt like extraspecial cargo at this time, as significant as the Cratchits’ roast goose.
My sister called as I motored towards her place. “There’s a slight spanner in the works,” she said nervously. “My flatmate’s just had a call from a friend who’s ill in bed with suspected Covid. So she’s going off to have a test.” A spanner indeed, since this meant that, until the results were back, we couldn’t go near my sister or her flat. When would the test results return? She wasn’t sure. And Mum was already in her car, steaming up the A3 with her special coleslaw and Beano the terrier. Help! What to do to save the party? I felt that sad droop of disappointment and pity.
All we wanted was a family supper to mark a birthday and a bit of ham. It seemed a fairly modest hope. Via a complicated rejig that involved getting the keys for my other brother’s house from his cleaner (he was in Poland, which is also quite 1939, but let’s not complicate matters by discussing that now), we relocated there and I unstrapped my meaty child and slid him into a pan. In the end, we were a modest four for supper: Mum, my little brother, his girlfriend and me.
Beano did his best to bolster the numbers by bouncing around the kitchen but his conversational skills weren’t up to much.
According to a nurse my sister spoke to, this is going to be a major problem as we slide towards autumn. Whether or not there’s another wave, we’ll all catch the usual sniffles and sore throats. The virus or just a cold?
Do we ring everyone we’ve seen in the past week or give it a day to work it out? What’s more irresponsible – ignoring a slight cough and hoping for the best, or spreading panic among our nearest and dearest? We could face months of retreating inside and then venturing out again, accordion-style, as we update one another about our mucus levels.
The flatmate’s results came back clear in the morning so Rosie could have come after all. But why risk it? And on the upside, at least there was plenty of ham.