COVID in the time of COVID

Well it had to get me, finally.  I'm the last skittle standing, the last couple in a dance marathon.  I'm Bruce Willis in Die Hard.  But, it got me.  I've probably had it for a day or two.  Thursday I definitely had that "I'm coming down with something" feeling, popped some Lem-sip capsules, and went to work.  In my defence, I had three recruitment campaigns all crowning in the space of two days.  What are you going to do?  Much as I hate recruitment, I had to do it, so I went in.

In my defence, most people I know have already had COVID.  In my defence, I thought that after two years maybe I wasn't going to get it.  In my defence, I've only got a sniffle.  But I took my last (free) lateral flow test and the positive result was unmistakable.  Blaring.  Visible from Portsmouth.

So that's me gone viral.  It's my own fault.  I've been carrying a mask in my bag and not wearing it.  It feels naughty but good, like eating two Grab Bags of Walker's Crisps.  But a mask in your bag will not do much for you. 

I've now ordered my first non-free box of LFTs, so that I can find out when I'm able to go back to work.  Of course, the nature of work these days means I can do most of it from home.  Technically I'm sick, but I've been bouncing up and down stairs this week shepherding candidates around.  Ironically today while doing that I was wearing my coronavirus leggings.  (My design, but not my legs).

Work in Progress

I realised today I hadn't showered for five days, which is quite disgusting.  It may be fairly obvious that my mental state is not all it could be, but I am intermittently fighting it.  The thing that helps (apart from actually having a shower so that I look normal) is watching Trinny Woodall videos, and reading Bored Panda threads.  Bear with me.

You may recall Trinny from the television, when she and her co-host Susannah used to grab people by the boobs and tell them what not to wear.  Trinny has come on a lot since then, and has made herself into a brand, literally.  When she's not flogging her makeup she makes videos showing how to wear clothes.  There is a slight problem in that I'm not 5ft 10 and built like a surfboard.  (Rather 5ft 4ish and built like a hovercraft.)  But it's her sheer enthusiasm and joy I love.  And now I put my next day's clothes out at night, looking forward to sallying forth in a harmony of colours and prints.  I'm not sure what sallying actually is, but it sounds like a good thing to do.

Bored Panda trawls platforms like Reddit to find people in such utterly dysfunctional relationships that it is a relief simply to be boring old me with my neuroses.  

Today I tried to go into work.  Yes, it's Easter Saturday.  There is something I need to do which, try as I might, I could not do at home.  And it needs to be done, ideally, before I go back after the Easter weekend.  Feeling utterly <MEH> I thought well maybe now is the time to try that shortcut that everyone mentions, the one I've always been too scared of because it looks like where you find dead bodies.  

Walking up the road to the dead body path was pleasant enough, and then it's about a quarter of a mile alongside woods and fields and no fucker can see you and I didn't even dare look behind me.  I know this is ridiculous but I'm a city girl.  The country is just full of nobody being able to see you die.  And then you're over a bridge on the A3 and into the school grounds.  It didn't occur to me until I got there that even with the code for the door, the school might be properly holiday-locked-up.  Which it fucking was, of course.  So I walked home the longer way, along the road.  I might, if I can get up early enough try walking in a couple of times a week - it's about half an hour.  Exercise is good for <meh> brains.  Apparently.  

Country Girl

I am, perhaps for the first time, at a loss for neat words to express myself at the moment.  When you move house, and move house, and move house, and still feel unhappy, then there is a common thread.  I know that the suburban gothic horror that goes on in my head is probably the source of my unhappiness.

Where I live is a really nice market town, surrounded by spectacularly beautiful rumpled countryside.  I work with lovely people.  On the minus side, my job sucks the most unpleasant arse.  And I'm about forty minutes' drive from writing groups and performance spaces and creative people.  But on balance life is stable and comfortable, if slightly parochial.

Nearly three years ago I returned to a country that is just a ghost of something.  It is run by soulless people with no sense of shame or honour.  People who will lie as easily as they draw breath.  I'm sure there is something of this in most countries but there is a horrible maliciousness in this current UK government.  It feels like they want to keep people on a low income down as far as possible.  And those of us on a middle income are not safe.  In France, fuel prices have risen by 4%.  In the UK by 54%.  People are having to choose between heat or food.  And the government doesn't give a shit.  As long as all their mates keep trousering profits, they'll tell us to put on another jumper and eat cheap pasta.

Sorry.  I wanted to write something entertaining.  All I can think about is the people I miss, and the things I miss.  I am still on a WhatsApp group from Brussels because I cannot find it in my heart to leave.  Was I stupid to move back to the UK?  It felt like a compelling need at the time.  But I miss Europe.  I am a European. 

Move It

One thing I've become terribly good at is putting my entire life into boxes.  I'll be celebrating Valentine's Day with a second negative COVID test (hopefully) and then next day I'm on the move again.  Not far, just down the road. I could probably do it myself with a big enough trolley.  But I have two masked and gloved chaps named Marco and Rafael doing it for me.  That makes them sound exotic like teenage mutant ninja turtles.  I fear they might be just men with ven.

Who knows how this next phase is going to go.  I'll have more space, for sure.  I can put up my pictures and paintings.  I can sit in an actual kitchen to have my vast amounts of coffee.  But I cannot get over the feeling of its being a prolonged glamping.  Nothing feels like home.  I'm not sure when last it did.

If I could tell you I have decided to settle down I would, but I have not.  With the state that the UK is in, I am drawn increasingly towards my second country and may well end up back in Brussels.  I know Belgium is probably just as corrupt, but at least it is still part of the EU (as am I, according to the chip in my Belgian ID card).

But for now, I'm an Ealing girl, as once I was many years ago.  The resonance of remembered Ealing still holds me in a sort of embrace.  It's a fairly cold embrace at the moment, with most things being shut.  But I could be in a lot worse places.

Driving Miss Crazy

I last drove a car in 2012.  Before that I think 2008.  So most of the last 13 years has been spent not driving.  It had reached the point where just thinking about driving made me feel sick with anxiety so, although I have a Belgian driving licence, I did not drive once in Belgium

Recently I've been wanting to get through this because I want to be able to use a car.  More specifically next weekend.  So I signed up with a car share thing.  I figured that if Tom Cruise (just a few days younger than me) can pilot a helicopter in a death spiral in the mountains of New Zealand, I could drive a Hyundai around Ealing.

I'd love to tell you it all went perfectly but trial run number one yesterday failed completely because there was something wrong with the keypad in the car.  Trial run number two was this morning.  The car was completely frosted, so I spent about fifteen minutes trying to work out the heating and the wipers.  Then the car wouldn't start: unsurprising as it was 0 degrees.  And then, bingo bongo, I was away.

Having rarely driven a new car, and certainly not one this new, everything felt sharp, and a bit too twitchy.  Bear in mind my first car was a 1976 Chrysler Sunbeam, which was like driving a rhino.  Out on the road, I was absolutely fine.  The only problem was when I went to put petrol in and couldn't get the cap off (I've googled it now), gave up and then found myself locked out of the car, with the swipe card inside.  Fortunately, car keys do still work as keys, but I had a bit of a wobble there.

Coming back to the car park, I executed a perfect parallel-park without using the cheating screen.  It's just like riding a bike.

Getting through this has been a major thing, so I'm pretty pleased about it.

Not On Mute

As ever, I am preparing to prepare to move.  My life over the past nine years has mainly consisted of packing up my stuff. There is something of happiness about it, as if one is going on a long trip.  A bit like Dracula with all his boxes of earth going to Whitby.  

I'm not sure yet where I'm going.  There are many options open and yet seemingly closed.  I have applied for a lot of jobs and not got a single interview.  While this could be for a number of reasons, I'm fairly sure it's my age.  There is no getting away from or around this.  However excellent my skills and experience,  I suspect employers see someone who left school before they were born as not the right fit.  A lot of equal opportunity policies don't even include reference to age, and I suspect there is unconscious as well as conscious bias.

But I'm not discouraged, and will keep applying for things.  In the meantime, I do need somewhere to live that is more than a prettily padded cell, particularly as this working at home lark seems likely to continue.  The most sensible thing would be to put everything in storage and go back into a house-share, until I know what I'm doing.  

One would think at nearly 59 I should know what I'm doing.  Recently, before we entered the current stringent lockdown, I had a lovely walk with some old schoolfriends.  Refreshing very old friendships has been one of the nicest things about coming back to the UK.  And a tiny, almost inaudible voice said this is where you are supposed to be.  Now, one should always be wary of little voices telling you things but this one seems to know something I don't.  

Perhaps I should just stop pushing against the current, and be still for a while.  Maybe that is what to do.  

Broad Thoughts From A Home

I've run out of words to say how crap things are at the moment, and it's crap for everyone else too so it kind of feels self-indulgent.  At least I'm relatively healthy, and employed, and have a roof.  Not to be sneezed at, nor continuously dry-coughed at.

But things are pretty crap.  Living and working in a 20 square metre studio, and seeing very few people, is doing my head in.  I will soon resemble a badly hollowed Hallowe'en pumpkin.  

Life seems to be going on (or not going on, or going off) elsewhere.  I hear the woman across the hall's pealing laughter often.  Somebody cleans the hallway at about 7am on a Tuesday morning, quite noisily.  I've yet to peep and see who it is.  Living nearest to the front door, I tend to take in parcels, for the company if nothing else.  People slam the front door when they go out but I don't have the heart to be angry, because they are a presence.  Well, an absent presence.  

Everything is filtered through screens.  Facebook and Instagram and Digital Spy Forums are little windows to live in.  I'm also part of the Next Door neighbourhood platform but that can be less than comforting.  It's actually a bit suburban gothic horror:  a white worm found in tap water, tales of drug-dealing by the Co-op, screenshots of men in hoodies caught in back gardens.  

Each weekend I promise myself I'll catch up on work so I don't start the week feeling lambent terror at how behind I am.  Each weekend I never do.  Perhaps this one will be different.  (It won't be).