Between blotch and blok

No strike that:

MERRY PLAGUEMAS 2022!

I've been ill in bed for two days, but testing Covid negative. 'Flu-ey, very, very 'flu-ey (and I've had the jab). So I was planning on staying out of the way when M-i-L arrived. I'm really not well enough to be out of bed.

Looby Loo has just been pinged by a colleague who is ill with Covid: they were working together on Wednesday when he took ill. Both masked. LL with an N95. Her test came up positive almost instantly :-( (She was on the point of going out to meet up with a friend too.) So it looks like she'll be hiding in the flat for the next few days. She was meant to be working tomorrow too.

So the tally is:

• 2020: successfully disease-free Xmas with the three of us in the old place under lockdown
• 2021: pretty much cancelled with M ill and postive on 22nd/23rd and me going down with it on the 27th (when he tested -ve for the first time)
• 2022: me ill, LL positive, and M and M-i-L already on their way here. But anything even vaguely sociable loos like being off. We have a backlog of games, y'know! On the other hand, we've the space to keep apart and plenty of food and drink in (not that I want food).

Now, I'm off to try and contact the travellers to see what they want to do about the situation.

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* The two best things about this holiday season are The Detectorists coming back and the World Service adaptation of The Dark is Rising.

Yesterday, with Moderna.

I thought last night that I'd escaped any reaction. But I slept badly, couldn't rest on my back or right side (and for once it wasn't the cat's fault), and woke with a I feel badly dehydrated kind of headache. The joint pains kicked in later, and the fever this evening. So slower than the A-Z, but jusr as debilitating. Still, all in a good cause.

In other news, Shadow needs to catch another mouse.

Cambridge has "quarantine" and has added a new definition.

Others have multiple words.

Me, I want to nominate the least used word of the year: SINGLE-FILE. (sorry, not not, I'm only shouting inside.)

No, being in the same household as the folk you are walking with (or cycling with) doesn't make you occupy the space of a single entity. If you are approaching somene and you're trying to obey the 2m rule, get in single-file. No, being a couple doesn't join you at the hips.

Actually, I've found that if you wear a mask outside, even where not required, people do distance themselves, tuck themselves behind one another. No mask, no reaction.

I've just seen a ballet sneeze! Or a sneeze in a ballet. Anyway, go watch the Scottish Ballet Company whilst it's still online (courtesy of the Edinburgh International Festival).

Just brilliant.

Penguin rewrite some famous stories to fit in with current times: 12 classic novels coronavirus lockdown would have absolutely ruined. I think The Great Gatsby works rather well, if not better, in its new version.
Mark Haddon gives a lonely man his own patronus: Social Distance: a graphic short story for the coronavirus age.

And in other news, one door closes and... another door closes. Looby Loo has had the virus recur. So she's on anew seven-day lockdown. And the rest of the household on the fourteen-day shut in. I'd been enjoying my early morning walks, too. Which reminds me, I have a few more pictures to post. Content for another post.

 Fascinating and easily comprehensible graphs of Countries beating Covid-19.

Interesting links:

• The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them by Erin Bromage
• Johnson’s message is very deliberate and very dangerous: here’s how to combat it by Jon Alexander

And personally. Got happily through three weeks back at work, getting my daily--lengthening brisker--walk. Last Tuesday, I crashed. I hit such  extreme exhaustion on Tuesday afternoon, I couldn't stay upright. Went to bed after an early lunch and didn't get up again until suppertime. Was apparently snoring. The lead-filled lungs were back. In the small hours of the morning, I was finding breathing hard. Felt as if I was trying to recover from a sprint race. Considered calling for medical advice, didn't in the end (mainly as I fell asleep again whilst considering what to do). Gradually felt better over the next few days, but was unable to work. Cut to yesterday, and I crashed again. So tired by midday and went to bed about 2.00 pm, didn't surface properly until five. Still knackered today. Letting the hens out made me breathless.

 Cute.

I'm waiting to get on the Suttons website--in a queue. Neat!

I need a few more seeds. Now I've found just how good the garden office is for setting seeds off--and the space to do it in--I need more seeds (that are not labelled use by 199*).

 Pretty certain, I've got it.

Actually felt too ill to work yesterday, as opposed to grotty but functioning as I have for the last couple of weeks. Haven't been the designated shopper for a fortnight, so my contact with the rest of the word has been very low. Of course, Looby Loo coming home from uni brought in a whole new set of possible bugs, and both LL and M have been shopping since.

Annoying as I'd been hoping LL and I could help out at MakeSpace.

Symptomatically, I still have only a very mild new cough, but the tightness in my chest and breathlessness have ramped up. Last Sunday I jogged on my permitted exercise period; this morning wandering down the garden to let out the hens was hard work. Was rather too uncomfortable to sleep well last night, too.

No fever, which is odd for me. Usually the worst symptom if I'm hit by a virus.

Yesterday's highlight was binge-watching the BBC Mallory Towers series. Too good for kids. The acting was terrific and the take on the books was fascinating, both true to the originals and not excruciatingly unpalatable but with interesting updates (dyslexia). It was interestingly filmed tho', presumably to keep costs down (evidently it's harder to have masses of CGI-ed uniformed school girls than daleks or cybermen): apart from the head girl we only saw the 1st years and only three teachers plus matron and her assistant. The settings were gorgeous too.