shewhomust | The phoney war

On Sunday afternoon,

durham_rambler declared that he wasn't getting enough exercise, it was a lovely day, he was hoing out for a walk. If he'd been planning a gentle stroll in the unexpected sunshine, I'd have joined him; but he wanted to explore a route around the site of the battle of Neville's Cross, which I knew would take him up and down hills and through mud, and would make me cross and breathless, so I stayed home. Sure enough, he returned not very much later, and collapsed onto the sofa declaring that he had been climbing hills and was worn out.

On Monday morning he was still feeling tired; he spent much of the day on the sofa, and this didn't refresh him much. He didn't have a temperature, and he wasn't coughing more than usual - less, if anything - but he didn't really taste his lunch. Was this COVID? The only way to find out was to send off for a test, so he did.

You may detect a certain lack of sympathy in the tone of this narrative: it wasn't impossible that he had been infected, but it was pretty unlikely, and he didn't have many symptoms or feel that unwell - I was a bit worried at how mopey he was on Monday, but by yesterday morning he seemed quite a lot better. Nonetheless, if we are taking this seriously, we'd better take it seriously: the house is large enough that he could pretty much self-isolate, if I slept in the spare bedroom. That gave us a bathroom each, and use of our own study as normal.

The test kit arrived yesterday, and went back into the post the same day; the negative result arrived by e-mail today, in time for us to lunch together in the kitchen. I'd call that a really impressive level of efficiency, and a happy ending to the story.