The Longest Ever Tuesday

I am terrible with trends, and have always been crap about fashion. If something is properly in vogue, I'll know it either because I've never heard of it before, or because it's something I used to like and I’m over it now.

I'm good with that. More often than not, I don't give a shit.

We all have our own strengths and weaknesses, our own passions. Some people for example - crazy as it may seem - don't like chickens. Others (ridiculously) don't recognize that Tuesday is the worst day of the week which it most certainly is. We're all here to run our own race, right? And if that race means you're the odd-looking creature in the corner jogging along with a hopeful expression, just label yourself unique and get on with what's higher up on your priority list.

Periodically though, I get FOMO. That means Fear Of Missing Out, apparently. I learned that just recently, but the first time I used it my 17-year-old almost choked and instructed me not to say it because it was ‘cringe’.

For example, in late March 2020, I sat in the backyard, furious. In truth, I was terribly sad, but I hadn't wanted to feel sad, so I’d opted for fury instead. I felt I was totally missing out. Every day, I masked up and gloved up and antiviral sprayed within an inch of life, and then I headed off to radiotherapy. And every day I'd see Facebook posts of jigsaws done, and sourdough starters, and announcements of what stores had toilet rolls.

Mark like some fiercely protective, sentry refused to let me near a store or a public place with a stoic resilience that can be quite annoying at times. So, burnt and angry and frustrated I had raged at him. “Oh for fucks sake, I wish this radiotherapy was over and I could get to enjoy the pandemic like everybody else.”

And yes, I am an idiot. Completely. I had no idea what was going on - though looking back, I'm pretty sure few people did.

I thought lockdown would be over in a couple of weeks, and within a month everything would be back to normal. 4 years later, I’m completely clear that there is no going back, and normal is a word that seems to mean different things to different people.

Anyhoos, maybe through luck, through Mark’s careful sentry work, through vaccines and caution and more luck and social distancing, and yet again, more luck, COVID never came a knocking. Not for any of us.

But at the end of last week, Lachlan started back at school. And this week, COVID finally entered Tweddley Manor.

Lachlan felt rough on Saturday, by Sunday I was ropey too. Lachlan tested positive but I was still negative. On Monday, we both mostly slept, looked after by Mark and Fergus who at that point were fine. On Monday night though, Mark started feeling pretty bad, and Fergus was left to deal with checking on the chickens, and doing the dog walks.

On Tuesday morning, Mark pottering around in the kitchen looking for medicine and multivitamins noticed the dishwasher had broken again, and that there were ants all over the kitchen floor.

So all of us, in our own form of disarray, rallied to the kitchen to clean, clear, and set down ant traps.

It was, as you might expect pretty brutal, and Lachlan announced “As Tuesdays go, is this what they mean by a Super Tuesday” and as shitty as we all felt, we all laughed.

By Wednesday, Fergus was coming down with it, but Lachlan was testing negative. By Thursday negative again, he was back at school, and Ferg had retreated to bed.

As of now, we’re mostly all on the mend. We’ve each had a varied ride with it: Lachlan's was fast and furious, Fergus’s seems more like a shitty cold. Mark had 24 hours of fever and sleeping pretty much all the time, and mine has been like a filthy, filthy hangover that's lasting about a week.

Our symptoms have varied, but COVID unceremoniously ran roughshod through our house. It was no fun, no fun at all, but what a wake-up call.

I'll take my COVID unfashionably late, thank you very much. For as shitty as I felt, I couldn't help but think how much worse it must have been to have come down with it during the Pandemic, during the doing of jigsaws and the sourdough starters and the weird obsession with toilet rolls and the bottled, gut-punching terror because the future of everything looked so bleak, and the last works to loved ones were through windows or on zoom, or not heard at all.

What happened to all of us during those years, was un-fucking-fathomable.

Because it wasn't just the COVID, it was everything. The powerlessness, the fear, the realization that those who were in positions supposedly to look after us, had all the time only been looking out for themselves. The lack of trust, the chaos, the separation from family, from friends, the long drawn-out tedium. And in the middle of it all, a terrifying viral killer. It was like a bad movie with Doug McClure in it (sorry Doug McClure) except it wasn't a fucking movie.

In the future, people will look back on those pandemic years and wonder how anyone managed to make it through. When they do that, they'll be meaning people like you. Yes, you.

If you’re here and reading this, you are amazing. Look at what you've come through. It's absolutely utterly crazy.

I’m honestly still a bit fuzzy about the last 5 years. It's like time dissolved into nothingness. So much sorrow and loss and fear. Something happened but nothing happened. Real but not real. What once could be taken for granted, is now a story from a distant past.

And here we are: Jigsaw sales are back to normal, sourdough is no longer fashionable, and you can buy toilet rolls wherever you like. But I am changed. I am the same but not the same.

Here in Tweddley Manor, the dishwasher is still broken. The ants have left the kitchen for the great ant farm in the sky, but we are each of us either completely fixed or on the mend.

And I am resolutely gratefully unfashionable, and our COVID storm has passed.

Wherever you are, and whatever you face, know that you are strong, you are resilient, and you are lucky. Because you are still here.

And on that note, with my big snuffly nose and my week-old viral hangover, I'm going back to bed.

Till next week Xo

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