Happy new year, everyone

 I remember all last year; whilst walking through the streets in London, trying to wriggle past the gauntlet of people trying to foist lateral flow tests onto me. And I, not wishing to be ungrateful, gently shrugged them aside like irritating mosquitoes, as I always kept a couple of boxes at home.

    Well those times have been absent for weeks, and after driving what must be a very lot of miles to find aforementioned tests, I've finally got one. It's funny how we (well, I) always take things for granted until they're gone. Never again. 

    My bout of Covid passed without incident as I had no symptoms whatsoever. My wife's has also gone now with only a few. Thank goodness for the three injections we had. I'm no doctor (my own skills, if you could call them that, were learnt in the Marines, and were the polar opposite of saving life), but I firmly believe that if it weren't for them I would have faired much worse.

    And finally, I realise that Christmas has gone because tomorrow, I have to go to my boss' restaurant and take down all the decorations, and neatly slice the twenty foot Christmas tree we put up in the reception. It's going to be so depressing when they're gone.

  

It's gone.

 To be truthful, the only reason I know I had Covid was because two lateral flows, and a PCR test told me I did. Nary a symptom a presented it's awful self.

    So, after the requisite number of days and two negative lateral flow tests later, I told my beloved that she could come back.

    Great, you might think.

    Well it was, until she tested positive two days later, even though she'd tested negative the day before. She hasn't given it to me because I used the last but one test to find out. Leaving just one for her in five days.

    Remember all those cretins that bought up all the toilet roll, dried food and pasta? Well they've come out of hiding again and now there's not a lateral flow test to be had in the country. And I, for one, am not camping all night outside the local chemist to get another.

    Apparently the test kits are manufactured in China.

    There's a certain irony there.

I finally got it.

 None of those naughty diseases, I hasten to add. My wife would be exceedingly irritated I were to be naughty. No, despite being very careful, and having three inoculations, I have COVID.

    Am I the only pedantic twit that thinks Omicron should have been called Epsilon - it being the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, and all?

    Anyway, the only way I know I have it is because two lateral flow tests said I did. I feel fine, chipper in fact. This afternoon I did an official PCR test - finally. After begging for another swab from the irritated and overworked attendant because I'd shoved it so far up my nose that it began to bleed.

    Now I just have to wait three days for the official verdict. Luckily I'm taking all the holiday I haven't taken this year and not currently on what laughingly passes for sick pay on this miserable little island.

    My wife was away visiting our grandchild and now she'll have to stay another week until I'm all better.

    I'll get by, somehow. A whole week of beer and war films. It's an awful job but someone's got to do it.

    Did I mention that my new computer boots up in exactly five seconds.

My life ended last Wednesday.

 Nothing so trivial as a hurtling meteor, or a perhaps a plane crashing into my house. Oh, no; nothing so mundane.

    My computer finally gave up the ghost. And as if just another merry jest, my monitor also croaked at the same time. what are the odds? 

    I was bereft, and hadn't realised upto that point just how much time I spent on the stupid thing. All weekend I wandered around muttering to myself until finally She-who-must-be-feared threatened me with extinction unless I either A, shut up, and leave the house, or B get another.

    So I did.

    Now I'm armed with something I swore I'd never buy; an all in one computer. It's great, and it works, and it's got sound, and ultra super duper high resolution. Unlike the last monitor which was so old I could barely make out anything on the very scratched screen.

    So all is well in the Lawrence household, much to the joy of SWMBF.

I got a strange urge last night.

Like most (moderately normal) people I sometimes get strange urges, but this time it was to write; something I haven't done for over a year. I don't know if I'll carry it on but it amused me at the time - 04.30 this morning.

‘Did you go out last night?’

  ‘Do you mean last night, or last evening?’ She made to reply but her husband continued in the voice she knew very well. ‘Technically, evening ends at eight pm. Thereafter, it’s night. So if you're asking if I went out last night, then the answer is no. I went out at seven thirty. Thus, I went out last evening.’

  She eyed the kitchen knife so close to hand. Every time he got into one of these moods the urge to disembowel him became so great she didn’t know how much longer she could resist the temptation. She stormed off before her hand automatically finished the job of which she had dreamed for so long.

  In the kitchen April nursed a cooling cup of coffee. She really didn't want it but it gave her hands something to do which didn’t involve slaughtering her husband. How had it come to this? Their first encounter was at university. Was it really twenty years ago? April’s student days were among the best of her life. A natural at music theory, all her friends and tutors said. For their first three weeks she had assumed the man she’d met in the library to be just another faceless student who didn't really feel the need to discuss his course. It was only after realising that he was not, in fact a first year student at all but a third year, far more experienced in life, but more importantly, student life than she, had quickly warmed to him. Expecting that they would have a lot in common, indulging his amusing slurs of everything academic and acerbic but often amusing wit, had been easy at first.

 

Back to work full time.

 That's the good news.

    After almost eighteen months of lockdown, and having weekends, actual whole weekends off, two days in a row, kind of thing, I finally remembered why I so welcomed lockdown in the first place, even if I was only getting half pay.

    I'm now getting full pay once more, and in order to get that I've gone back to doing over, way over, sixty hours a week at work.

    I'm finished with the whining now. You can't get anything for nothing. I'm just glad to be earning once more and not living on my wages.

    Actually, now I'm once more part of the proletariat, it's my God given right to complain - so I will.

Britain's going bonkers

 Yet again this morning I was up before 5am in the forlorn hope of buying petrol.

    As usual I was almost at the front of the queue after being told yesterday by the local garage manager that the resupply was happening overnight.

    It hadn't, and when he arrived he told me it was coming between 6 and 10 am. I should have waited but it was raining so hard I was beginning to feel concussed - and thus I went home. 

    Mistake. 

    I just popped down there to look and the queue of cars seemed to last forever. Now they're even bringing in the army (unfortunately not to shoot or arrest the idiots determined to fill up their cars up every day with fuel they don't need) but to drive tankers.

    Well, until this is all over I have to take the Underground to work as I've got absolutely none left in my two bikes. Knowing my usually miserable luck I'll probably catch Covid.