Well, it was bound to catch up with me eventually. I felt like I was getting a cold on Monday, and as I still have some LFTs lying around I did a test on Tuesday out of curiosity. I initially thought it was negative as usual (and the gov.uk reporting site prompted me to use the camera rather than entering the result manually, and also said negative), but when I looked closely it seemed there was a very faint line. The general consensus was that yes, that was a positive test, and sure enough when I repeated it on Wednesday there was a very solid line. Curse you, novel coronavirus, you won in the end.
Like most people’s experience recently, it wasn’t really that bad – pretty much indistinguishable from a common cold. Certainly not enough to stop me working, but I spent the week at home, and ended up with an almost unprecedented seven consecutive days of no running.
I’ve been continuing to put the odd bit of bread crust out for the badger, and the other night the camera caught him (and, separately, a fox) trying to get in through the cat flap.
I dropped my razor in the shower, and the screw snapped off (apparently the most common cause of demise), so I treated myself to an upgrade to a Rockwell 6s. Only used it twice so far, so obviously haven’t settled on which setting is best, but no complaints yet.
On Friday the utility room smoke alarm went off while I was making a stir-fry. I grabbed it off the ceiling and it stopped beeping, and rather than taking the battery out to stop it going off again, for some reason I thought “I’ll just shut it in the microwave for now, so the smoke won’t get to it”. What I neglected to do was check that the timer was on zero, but my suspicions were raised when I heard a ping a few seconds later.
So anyway, it’s probably time for a new smoke alarm.
I reckon there must be a book in all these mishaps (“The Chickpea Incident, and Other Tales of Incompetence”). I just need to somehow acquire Acaster levels of fame first, so people would actually read it.
By Sunday all I had left from the covid was a lingering cough (I always get those after a cold, and they can last for weeks or more), and an LFT was pretty much negative again (if you looked really closely there was possibly the suggestion of a shadow of a line), which I figured was good enough to avoid missing the inaugural Martlesham 7 (it used to be a 5k & 10k, but building work messed up the old route). It was tough going (mentally as much as anything, on a four lap course), but I staggered round in just over 51 minutes, which seemed reasonable enough in the circumstances. I felt pretty wiped out by the time I finished, and again once I’d cycled home, although the latter might have been partially attributable to the five pints in the Bader afterwards. Currently feeling a bit sorry for myself thanks to a combination of a headache (day drinking hangover I guess), a bad back, and a cough which has a habit of triggering sudden pain from one or both of the other two.