The weariness of catching Covid

IT’S Monday morning and I’m up at 9am – early by retiree standards. I’m soon mixing margarine and sugar and slicing glace cherries into halves.

My favourite easy biscuits are on the way, with a batch destined for the friend I’ll be seeing in a few hours’ time. It’s a tiny price to pay for his years of free chiropractic treatment.

I’ve not done a lateral flow test for weeks but, as I’m going into a health setting, it seems a wise precaution. Half-an-hour later, I’m staring at the result in astonishment: I’ve tested positive for Covid-19.

After dodging the wretched virus for two-and-a-half years. After spending months helping to marshal queues at the local vaccine centre. After having my jabs and wearing a mask until only recently, when it seemed that me and the missus were the only ones doing so in Tesco.

But when and where did it come from? I phone the friend with whom I spent much of Saturday at a cricket match. He’s tested positive, too.

Did he give it to me, or vice versa? Two days from transmission to confirmation seems rather quick. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that we’re stricken at the same time.

There follows nine days of not feeling well, during which my wife catches it too. I won’t bore you with the details, because I’m sure many of you have had very much worse, except to say that in addition to the heady, chesty cold that I expected, and the nausea and numerous toilet trips that I didn’t, two things stand out: lack of appetite, and extreme lethargy.

Now, food and me very rarely fall out, so when I can’t finish an apologetic meal of two fish fingers, a potato waffle and a few peas, I know I’m in a bad way.

And the boredom: there’s enough of that in retirement as it is, without lacking the energy to do something even if you want to.

Worse, though, is the tiredness. I can’t be fagged to do anything, except keep going back to bed, because all I want to do is get today out of the way in the hope that tomorrow will be better. But, of course, I can’t sleep because I’ve done nothing to tire me out.

Finally, three days after a negative test on day six, I’m feeling almost back to normal.

But all those biccies have sat in a Tupperware pot, having failed to entice even my sweet tooth. I’ve not offered them to anyone else, not with having had my germfilled head hanging over them, and by now they’re past their best.

So, off to the bird table they go and, within a couple of hours, the neighbourhood pigeons have devoured them all and rewarded me by decorating the fence panels with streaks of poo.

About sums it up.