Well that’s a bit of a bummer. Apparently I have Covid 19. Yet, by some fluke, Jane is uninfected. There is, of course, nothing wrong with me or, rather, I have no symptoms whatsoever. It all started with Jane complaining yesterday that she had a headache, aching limbs and generally not feeling tip top. I dismissed the headache (which we both have had, off and on, all month) as a known side-effect of the low-carbohydrate diet that we are on, and I would normally have glossed over the rest of Jane’s symptoms as the outcome of her known long-term chronic valetudinarianism; however the aching limbs did sound worrying. The two of us participate in a long-term Covid study being undertaken by King’s College in London which asks us simply to log in every day and report whether we are well or not. I suggested that she duly report ‘sick’ on the App and back they came, asking her to arrange a test, using the study as authority, with the option of taking a friend. We managed to arrange a test within the hour and duly piled into the car for the drive-in experience, repeating the process of last October. That was at 1400 yesterday; by 0800 this morning we had the results. Jane’s email came first: it was negative.
“Told you so”, I said with great relish, “Nothing wrong with you”.
Ten minutes later my email came in; it was positive.
“What?”, I said, “WHAT? But, but….I haven’t been anywhere”.
I haven’t mixed with anyone. I haven’t even been out to exercise. On the odd occasion when I have left the house I have simply sat in the car in a supermarket carpark. The only person I have mixed with is little Miss Negative, and she has not been anywhere other than the supermarket, once a week, where she wears the obligatory mask and disinfects the trolley and her hands religiously. I think my result may be a ‘false positive’, but we can’t afford to take any chances: if Jane gets ill then I will starve to death, my corpse found three months later on the kitchen floor with a withered hand reaching out for the can opener. The long and short of it is that Jane and I must isolate from the world now for ten days. I looked at Jane and she at me. She made the decision for me:
“I’m moving out”.
“Oh fair enough I suppose”, I said resignedly, “I suppose it was the whistling that finally tipped the balance…”
“Not out of the house, fool”, she said, “Out of the bedroom. I’ll move into the spare room”.
“Whoopee! So I get the television and en-suite bathroom?”
“You’ll need them if symptoms develop and you have to take to your bed”.
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that”.
We cannot easily isolate during the day, but we have pulled out the leaves of the dining table so that I sit at one end of the table while she sits two metres away at the other end, like Lord and Lady Muck taking tiffin in Shacklepin Towers, but without the footman to serve the food. The frequent bleach disinfection process of door handles, remote controls and switches has been reinstated with a vengeance and I have been banished from the downstairs loo (now re-designated The Lady Toilet, seat down, lavatory paper dispensing from the top of the roll). A no-touch policy has been introduced and we are swerving around each other like two like-poles on magnets. It seems a bit daft seeing as how we slept together last night, but there you go. The windows have been thrown open and I am writing this in a freezing gale like Captain Scott scribbling down his final words in Antarctica after failing to reach the South Pole. Oh well, I wondered what we should do to pass the time this week.
I must say I was very impressed by the process that was triggered by my positive test result. Within five minutes of my bad news I received a barrage of texts and emails telling me (us) what to do and asking with whom I had been in contact recently (no-one) so that they could be contacted. It was all very slick given the negative press the government has been receiving over the last ten months. The vaccination programme is a further instance of a UK success story: over 8 million people (roughly 13% of the UK population) have received their first injection and we seem to be on track for immunising everyone over the age of 70 by mid February. Jane and I, at 69, are in the next phase after that. An unseemly row has broken out now because the EU was slow to place orders for their vaccines, slow to approve them for use and slow to start immunisation. The organisation insisted that the task must be undertaken centrally, and not arranged by individual countries of the Union, with the result that the Union’s immunisation programme has been as sluggish as a suet pudding, and just as wobbly. The UK placed orders with Pfizer three months before the EU, and approved the vaccines just before Christmas. The EU is now demanding that the laboratory in Belgium stop fulfilling the UK order and divert the output to the Europe instead, threatening to stop any exports. Moreover, the EU is demanding (note that pejorative verb) that the laboratories making the Oxford vaccine in Britain should stop supplying the UK and should send the output to Europe. You couldn’t make this up. It makes me so glad that the UK left that poisonous organisation on 31 December last year. Closer to home, last week in Wales the First Minister defended his order for vaccination teams to slow down their rate of injections as “it would use up all the stocks of vaccine allocated and leave the teams idle”; someone pointed out to him that the best place for the vaccine was in a vulnerable person’s arm, not sitting in a vial. Statistics-wise, the number of positive test results remains high, but continues to fall, as does hospital admissions; daily deaths in the last 24 hours (measured by date of death) stand at 1,239 and is also falling (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths). The media is taking enormous delight in reporting that the total death toll from Covid in the UK now exceeds 100,000 and implies, with relish, that every single death is Boris Johnson’s fault (“The Prime Minister has blood on his hands.…”). Oh, for heaven’s sake! Overall, we may possibly have turned the corner, but it will be a long waiting game. A review of lockdown in England will take place on 22 February (don’t hold your breath) and it has been declared that schools will remain closed here until March at the earliest.
The issue of educating our children in the present circumstances is a thorny one, not only because of the months of schooling lost, but for mental health reasons. A high incidence of mental health illness in the young has been reported, probably as much because of concerns over failing examinations as the inability of children to meet and play. Parents have also reported serious difficulty with trying to balance working at home with home-schooling of their children. I am not sure how parents who cannot work at home manage with childcare, though key workers can send their children to school as normal. I believe A-Level and GCSE examinations this year have been cancelled and pupils’ results will, instead, be assessed by their teachers – a process that could be likened to someone performing their duties to their own entire satisfaction. It has been suggested that universities lower, or abandon some of, their entry standards to facilitate the admission of disadvantaged children. This may be a fair proposal provided the universities do not lower their graduation standards at the same time – a very real concern: I, for one, do not want to cross a bridge, fly in an aircraft or sail in a ship designed by a so-called engineer who has not been educated to a proper standard, nor do I wish to be treated by a half-trained doctor. I understand that home-schooling for state school pupils varies, but know of one report where the pupils receive only two hours of on-line tuition a day. In contrast, our neighbour’s children, who normally go to private school, receive on-line tuition from 0800 to 1600. In Portugal, the socialist government has banned private schools from giving on-line tuition because Portuguese state schools cannot match it, the motto apparently being that if we all cannot fit into the lifeboats, then none of us will be allowed to abandon ship: a strange philosophy.
It is a funny old thing being under close arrest, or lockdown as governments prefer to call it. Some of us are content in our own company and can cope, but there must be many – particularly those without a partner or spouse – who face very real challenges or mental issues. Imagine being stuck in a high-rise flat on your own in a big city, perhaps with a noisy neighbour upstairs, no job, and the only exercise being in a crowded urban park. Add to that the possible overlay of being old, computer illiterate, with no friends and no relatives. It must surely be hell for them. Logic dictates that if we isolate ourselves then the spread of an infection must surely be inhibited (though I refer the honourable reader to the exception that proves the rule, moi), so one can follow the argument that a lockdown is necessary for the good of all. However, if you look at the UK government’s own statistics ((https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases ) you will see that infections in the UK actually peaked on 1 January 2021 and were already falling when this lockdown was implemented on 5 January. This is very curious, but suggests that the previous Tier system of focussed regional restrictions may have been producing fruitful results before the present extreme universal isolation measures were brought in. In a similar vein, some pundits have blamed the increase in infections on the UK’s relaxation of restrictions on Christmas Day (hence the, “blood on his hands” reports), but the data does not support that: infections were rising steadily in the UK from about 28 November (when the second lockdown was still in force) and the statistics show no spikes on or after 25 December. I have taken the exceptional step of including links to the UK government statistics on the Office of National Statistics (ONS) website in my blog this week, just to counter any thoughts you may have of “Horatio on his hobby horse again”. The pressure on our hospitals and their staff is indisputable, as are the deaths that continue; I merely suggest that a more targeted isolation régime, with some compromise with normal life, might balance the Covid deaths with the deaths from neglected medical conditions and the cases of mental illness.
Working from home is a relatively new experience for many and, of course, it is a process that can only be practised in limited cases by white-collar workers. Some people have sworn by it, predicting that it is the way of the future and that many city offices will close; others are not so sure. A recent report by two top finance companies has suggested that the practice is “fraying at the edges” and will not last after the present epidemic. Certainly the concept sounds good: no need to dress, no commuting, no timetable. You set your own agenda within the bounds of producing a defined output. In practice there are problems: you miss the company of colleagues, socially and professionally; problems that once could be solved by wandering over to the next desk for a chat now have to be tackled formally and lengthily using email or video conference; motivation can be hard (I recently heard on the radio of people who did all their work in bed and never got up except to prepare food and drink and use the lavatory); personal standards fall; there are domestic distractions; you never get away from the job. I experienced the last drawback in a very minor way when I was serving in my last ship, HMS NONSUCH. There was an Engineers’ Office deep in the bowels of the ship where I had a desk and where I normally completed all my paperwork, but many other officers simply worked from their cabins. I thought I would try that, and have the correspondence brought up to me on a regular basis. I lasted a week. I found I could not resist tackling the paperwork in my IN tray, often drafting letters or writing reports up to midnight, and I could not force myself to take a break. More currently, my son who normally works for the government in London, has been working from home since March 2020. I asked him how he was getting along and he reported that his day started at 0600 and he was still participating in video conferences with ministers and others at 2200; he said he felt exhausted, and I am not surprised. He does have a critical job, so his experience may be an extreme case, but I am sure the drawbacks can be applied to many home workers.
Previous generations would often have their future trades or jobs chosen for them by their parents, and would be pushed into them with the help of some nepotism. I know of cases, even in my generation, of friends who ended up in a career that way: girls thrust into nursing or secretarial courses, boys pressured into joining the Navy. Some of us, however, have the luxury of choosing our careers and being contented with our decision (the secret, probably, is to decide the job you want to do while at school before your parents decide it for you). We generally choose the type of job we want to do and, if we don’t like the way it is panning out we move on. Mid-way through my time in the Royal Navy I decided to leave and become an engineering consultant in industry. The job was academically challenging and very rewarding, but after three years I could bear it no longer: I left and rejoined the Navy, taking a pay cut in the process. The reason? The job was destroying my soul. Do you remember what it was like when we took our school or university exams in the gymnasium or hall, each of us sitting at desks far apart, total silence, and writing all the time for hours? Well that was what it was like being an engineering consultant: you came into work at 0830, you sat at your desk, you took out the paperwork for whatever project you were working on, and you completed calculations or wrote reports all day until 1700, with thirty minutes off for lunch. There was no office banter or chatter, no formal coffee break and every minute of the day was recorded against a contract; you felt guilty even visiting the lavatory or reading a technical journal because it was using the client’s time and your own project’s resources. The only break I received was getting out on visits for meetings with clients. I was used to the mixed social and professional life of the Navy: Management By Walking About, working all hours but enjoying myself in the process, socialising with shipmates and encouraging my workforce. Hence the return to the True Faith, despite the drop in pay. The moral of the story is that all work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy (and can, in extremis, give him or her mental problems). By the way, my return to the Royal Navy did my career the power of good in a personal sense (I had learned a great deal), if not a professional one (damn, I had always fancied that Vice Admiral’s hat).
With the exception of minor war vessels and submarines, the Commanding Officers of HM ships always relax and eat in their own cabins and are the only officers to have en-suite facilities and their own separate dining cabin. Other officers, of course, eat in the Wardroom and the Captain only enters that mess by invitation. This is a traditional practice that dates back beyond Nelson’s time and is based on the premise that it is easier to command and make unpleasant decisions if one is not too chummy with one’s subordinates. It makes for a very lonely life for a Commanding Officer, however, and they all seem to develop a particular aura, some in the manner of a Roman emperor. Of the ships’ captains under whom I served, some were unpleasant; many were unreasonable; all were very demanding; most were eccentric in some way. None was “nice”. Yet all were professional, first-class leaders for whom I had the greatest of respect. I believe the Masters of merchant ships are often imbued with the same characteristics, despite – in their case – messing with the other ship’s officers in the saloon. Yes, working alone does have its problems.
The Diet is still rolling along or, in Jane’s stated case, not rolling along fast enough. She has started fantasising about steamed puddings and jam roly poly now. Just to give you a flavour, we had soft- boiled eggs with asparagus soldiers for breakfast this morning (crikey, isn’t it amazing how rapidly your digestive system passes that asparagus through your body) and, for luncheon, we had miso soup with slices of mushroom and spinach. The latter had the colour and consistency of Irrawaddy River water, and it appeared to be flavoured with debris removed from the strum box of the starboard stern gland bilge pump, but it all tasted very nice. We end Phase 1 of this diet (ie the really strict bit) at 0800 on Monday 1 February, when we have the Weigh In. We will see how I got on after just under a month.
The Archbishops of York and Canterbury have asked the nation to join in prayer every night at 1800 from 1 February to remember those have died from the virus and to pray for our recovery from the epidemic. I won’t go all religious on you other than to say that prayer has worked for me at least three times and I think the proposal is worth serious consideration: we cannot come together in churches at present, but perhaps our collective voices may be heard from our own homes. Alas, prayers or faith healing do not always work despite our best efforts. I once heard of a chap who went to one of those mass faith-healing sessions, much favoured by American evangelists. The preacher gave a long and very sincere sermon, alternately haranguing the audience for their sins then assuring them that if they prayed hard and seriously enough, then miracles could be performed. After an hour or so he called for two people in the audience who were afflicted in some way to come forward and be healed. Two men volunteered: one was crippled in one leg and walked only with the aid of crutches; the other had a very bad stutter. The preacher called them up onto the stage, but asked them to go behind a curtain so that they could concentrate all the better on their prayers. He then called on the audience to join him in prayer for healing the two men, to concentrate hard and urge God to show His power and help the afflicted. He prayed for about ten minutes, frequently crying out for mercy and kindness and encouraging the audience to work with him. He then turned his attention to the men behind the curtain and called out:
“We pray for your recovery! You, with the crutches: throw them down”
There was an encouraging double ‘thump’ from behind the curtain.
“Praise the Lord”, said the preacher. He went on,
“We pray for your recovery! You, with the stutter: say something”,
And a plaintive voice from behind the curtain said,
“He’s fa – fa – fa – fallen over!”
You can’t win them all.
The day is drawing to a close on Day 1 of quarantine and I simply must purloin the little handbell that we use in the Shacklepin household to summon help or service from our spouse when ill. After all, I am the one who is supposed to be infected, so I think I should have it. I will give it a try tomorrow morning when I wake up to advise Jane that I am ready for that cup of tea. I will let you know how I got on next week, virus willing.
28 January 2021
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 
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