Sunday 29th March 2020

Page composed using

Sunday 29th March 2020

08:22 GMT

It didn't matter how much sun there was, which was actually not much, or what the thermometer might have said, yesterday was a bloody cold day. At first I thought I might have been feverish, but the quickest way to atop the shivers was to close the bathroom window. It's opening faces north where icy blasts, direct from the arctic were chilling all they touched. The temperature may have been as high as 11° C according to the thermometer, but it still felt like 2° C as that wind whistled around those bits of me that it is better to keep warm !

It looks like someone has turned the clock back to January. Today could feature some rain, maybe a little sunshine, but mostly dull grey and cold. Incidently there is a 76% chance of rain as I type this, but it is actually sunny at the moment. The latest revision of the forecast says that 11am is when we might get a shower, but most daylight hours could feature a sunny spell or two. It looks like one of those days where the forecasters don't really know what the day will be like, and have just chucked in a load of averages in the hope that some of it will be about right. The wind is still from the north so it seems certain that today is going to feel very cold. Tomorrow is currently thought to be dry, but it will feature far more dense cloud that will make the day seems gloomy in the extreme. Once again it is predicted the wind will be blowing straight in from arctic, and tomorrow will feel bloody cold too.

I was probably thinking a bit too much about it being cold in that last paragraph, and after the last full stop I decided I would go back to bed for 5 minutes. It turned out that I fell asleep, and almost a whole hour passed before I realised it. I didn't expect to fall asleep at all. It was one of those things you do because you can do it, rather than need to do it. Hmm, it seems maybe I did need to do it.

On the whole, yesterday was a tedious day. I managed to keep myself amused, but it didn't feel like I achieved anything. My big problem is that I felt so cold. As I recounted above, closing the bathroom window made a huge difference to the temperature, and I don't know why I didn't give in to closing it a day or two previously. There were a few times during the day when I felt so chilled that I wondered if I might be running a fever, but my thermometer said no. Most reading were about 36.x° C, or as much as 1° less than what is considered "normal".

I probably should have gone out for a walk yesterday. If I had worn one of my thicker coats I could have easily ended up feeling too warm instead of too cold. A walk would have been good for my circulation too. I am probably fortunate that the Clopidogerel blood thinning drug that I currently take will provide some protection from deep vein thrombosis while sitting for hours at my PC. I felt duty bound to remind Patricia of the dangers of sitting at her PC for hours on end. I know her, if she has work coming in, stuff to translate, she can be a workaholic. Unfortunately she is one person who did get deep vein thrombosis while on a transatlantic flight, and so need to take extra care.

Even if I didn't do that much yesterday, I did occasionally consider stuff I might have done if I hadn't felt so frozen. It was one thing working in the kitchen for 10 minutes or so with the temperature around 14° C, but spending any length of time doing mostly lots of small, and boring jobs, in the back room would have been too unpleasant. Most would say the answer would have been to put on some warmer clothes, but being over dressed does not make me feel very dynamic.

The real paradox about these times is that yesterday could have been an equally boring day if there was no lockdown, the shops were full of food, the pubs were open, and trains were running to the seaside. It makes it a bit irrational to feel bad specifically about the lockdown when I could so easily have been bored on any other day - and I frequently am bored on cold and miserable days.

I don't think that in these troubled times I could ever admit to having a Covid-19 infection until I was on the floor gasping for breath, and I would even feel reluctant to say I have the common cold (also caused by a corona virus). Yet from time to time it does feel like I am fighting something. The hay fever, that is not unprecedented, but never before as annoying as it seems to have been for the last 3 weeks or more, could be symptoms of something other than hay fever. It could be a mix of both. This morning the itching from my nose seems to be fading out, but I am feeling very slightly snotty.

There was one incident yesterday that was both worrying and not worrying. Somehow I managed to try and breath in some fizzy Diet Coke (I think it was the bubbles tickling my throat or nose). That had me coughing in a way that could have been seen as a symptom of Covid-19 by anyone who didn't know the real reason why. It did have a brief knock on effect where I had to cough a few more times a bit after the incident. On one good cough I even coughed up a little bit of phlegm.

I find it amusing to think like a hypochondriac, but I know there are others on social media who are almost hysterical with fear. They do not seem to understand the situation at all. They have also not made one amusing connection either. To prevent the spread of Covid-19 we are supposed to keep at least 2 metres from any one. They fear it is not working because number of infections are reported to be still rising, but no one on social media has admitted they have actually caught the disease, and I have only seen one friend of a friend, of a friend who knows of some old man who has died from it.

In complete contrast, quite a few people complain of coming down with an ordinary cold - the sort that all but the healthiest bastards will get for a few days at least once a year. This sort of proves that compared to weak and woolly Covid-19, the common cold virus can leap tall building at one bound, and infect people from the other side of town. This would not be remarkable at any other time, but now you can become a social pariah after just one sneeze.

I was bitterly disappointed by the lack of any entertainment on TV last night. Once again I was in bed with a book quite early. Once again I seemed to enjoy quite a lot of sleep. Maybe that is another indicator that I am fighting an infection. I certainly don't feel very dynamic this morning, but I can't really say I feel much different to many mornings. I still have this sort of bunged up, hay fever like feeling, but I don't seem to have any specific symptoms of anything else. I guess it is true that I keep yawning, and could easily be tempted to go back to bed again. I may just lay on my bed later, and if I sleep, I sleep. There is no reason not today.

One of what I consider to be an important indicator of my current health, my blood glucose level, is lower this morning. One more similar drop would put me back in the sweet zone, but at the moment it is still higher than I prefer. Unexplained weight loss can be considered a bad thing - unless you are me where any weight loss, short of chopping off a leg, is something to be cheered. I know I am trying to make the food I have last longer, but sometimes it doesn't feel like I am on a diet, and yet my weight continues to slowly drift downwards day by day. At this rate I will fade to nothing in another 125 years.

If I could be sure I wouldn't start sneezing I would go out hunting for food today. I have a very specific shopping list. I definitely want to get another couple of 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke, and I have a yearning for fish fingers. I could possibly get both from one of the small food shops in Catford - albeit at inflated prices. I would also like to buy last Friday's edition of New Scientist, but I don't know of any other stockist apart from the corner shop, and I heard yesterday that she has closed shop for at least a month - probably because her weedy husband has succumbed to Covid-19.

Today could be almost like yesterday, but with one difference. With the bathroom window closed again (as if it were winter) it is less cold in the unheated parts of the house. I did leave the heater on low in the living room last night because I didn't have to worry about all the heat rushing up the stairs, and straight out the bathroom window. It is still no more than 16 or 17° C downstairs, but when I went down to the kitchen a bit earlier it seemed to have crossed the threshold from "very chilly", to "not that chilly". It may be possible that I will do some more tidying/clearing in the back room today, but mostly today is just another day where I will make it up as I go along.