As I was cocooned in three blankets and six cushions on the sofa at 4am trying to watch ‘Dragon’s Den’ I was feeling a bit sorry for myself if I’m honest. I’d already completed the days’ Wordle challenge and then the internet crashed so I’ll never know if Peter Jones wanted to invest in a board game. My throat hurt, my ears hurt, my nose hurt and my phone needed charging before I could play solitaire. I dropped off at an uncomfortable angle, eventually being woken up by my youngest rustling a lateral flow test packet. Here we were again.

We escaped catching it for a long time but over the last week three out of the four of us have been suffering with Covid (lord knows how my other half has stayed Covid free, he’s a freak of nature). For us all it’s been like a pretty bad cold but even though we all caught it at about the same time it affected us differently. P had a sore throat and was a bit warm and sleepy for two days before testing positive, then fairly persistent cold symptoms. T had a sore throat and tested positive the very next day, plus her cold symptoms have gone on a really long time – well it feels like anyway. I took 5 days to start with symptoms (despite having been a cushion for Phoebe on Wednesday) and have spent all week getting worse. Whether it’s sleep deprivation or Covid I don’t know but I’m shattered and my brain is a bit mushy. It’s hard to concentrate. But hey ho, things could be much worse. Thank the lord we’d been vaccinated.

The house is of course in disarray. The number of lateral flow tests is getting silly and the inability of my children to put anything in the bin meant at one point I had no idea whose test was whose. Not that it mattered since they were all positive.

It’s so flipping boring too. I’ve got restless legs because I’ve watched too much TV/read too many books but if I try to move about I want to sit down again. I hadn’t thought about the fact that when you get ill it’s usually only a handful of days. This seems endless. We are long past the mythical 5 days when you might start to get a negative test (T is on day 9 of a fairly fierce positive line).

The kids have typically responded very differently. One was all too keen to have a week off, and has enjoyed getting up late, playing piano, bullet journalling and watching a lot of American TV (which frankly I’ve quite enjoyed as well). The other was sent into a tailspin due to looming GCSEs and concerns she was going to miss some mock results, time on her coursework and a really complicated maths test (she’s up there now doing the remote invigilated extra curricular two hour maths test even though she’s off sick – I swear if she didn’t look like me I’d think she was swapped at birth). I’ve secretly enjoyed seeing them more often to be honest.

We did have one moment of entertainment factor. Our neighbours are moving out soon and are still working through some possessions they won’t be needing at their new home. Today they brought us round an exercise bike which we took at arms length. It would have been painful irony for me to give them an illness while they were trying to get me fit.I wonder how long it will sit in the hall before I have enough energy or enthusiasm to move it.

Anyway this is mostly just for posterity. Another day another stick up a nostril. Covid sucks but we are lucky to have been able to order toilet roll online.