Update: COVID

 Remember when I said that we hadn't had COVID? 

Aah, good times.

This week we have both been hit HARD by the plague, and as a result have spent the last few days coughing, sneezing, groaning and (in my case) complaining that we can't taste or smell anything.

Fuck's sake.

I went into work on Monday, did a bit of useful stuff and then asked if it would be ok to go home early to finish a 700-page proof of Ordinary Monsters, which I wanted to return to the office before my last day on Thursday. Plus I felt a bit rubbish - sore throat, more of a cough than usual.

Tuesday morning I felt slightly worse, but well enough to read my book. But by about 3pm on Tuesday I felt AWFUL. Took a LFT and there was a veeeeeery faint second line.  Then came incredible chills and shivers, to the extent that I took to my bed before teatime, and did not emerge for another 14 hours.

Wednesday saw Mr WithaY announcing that he too now felt dreadful, and he took an LFT which popped up with a massive immediate POSITIVE result. Yay.  Interestingly, the phone app has told him to isolate for 6 days, but told me I had to isolate for 9. 

I did another lateral flow test on Thursday - couldn't have been more positive. Huge dark purple PLAGUE line flashed up immediately, none of this hanging about for 30 minutes nonsense.

Sent off for a PCR test, and had the result back in less than 24 hours, telling me that yes, I did indeed have COVID-19. 

Finally.  No more pandemic-FOMO for me.

So I missed my last day in the office, which made me very sad; it's been lovely working there, and I loved the team, as well as actively enjoying the work. Oh, and I won't be able to help out my lovely mate Jo with some cookery shenanigans next week. 

I know that compared to so many other people's terrible losses, that's very small beans, but I'm still disappointed. 

Today I left the house for the first time since last Monday (other than going out into the garden to look at the snow, the tulips, the pond or the stars) and went around the block with Mr WithaY and the dog. And, boyo, was I tired afterwards? Yes. Yes,  I was very tired.

Speaking of the pond, remember all the anti-heron precautions we took to stop any more of our beautiful Koi carp being stolen away by big flappy bastards?

We might as well have saved our money, time and effort, because whilst we succeeded in preventing the herons ravening through the group, we had not considered otters.

Fucking otters.

We realised that we hadn't seen much of the fish for a day or two, and went out to check on them. What we found was a scene of desolation and carnage - rocks and plants scattered, the underwater lights all knocked out of whack, and two sad little sets of crunched-up Koi scales on the lawn. And eyes.  Apparently otters leave the eyes.

No more fish for the WithaY pond, we decided. We're encouraging other sorts of wildlife to visit, as we already seem to have herons and otters. 

There was frogspawn last Spring, kindly donated from our next-door-neighbour's pond, which duly transformed into teeny frogs, all of which immediately buggered off into the long grass, never to be seen again. They probably headed straight back to their home pond next door. 

There have also been a few dragonflies, or possibly damsel flies. Water boatmen, snails and many types of bee, hoverfly and (bastard) wasps, all loving the waterfall. Oh, and the local pigeons have decided to use the pond as their preferred bathing spot - it is highly comical watching them flopping heavily into the water and having a good wash, before creaking up onto the nearby trees to dry off.

I'm hoping we've seen the last of the snow, as my tulips are flowering and I don't want them crushed by the weather.

I don't want any of us to be crushed by the weather.

Communicado

Ah, technology.

Once more I am able to converse on the telephone. Once more, I can surf the myriad wonderful shores of the Internet. Once more I can dick about on Facebook.  Once more, we discover that life is not like Star Trek.

Last Saturday, about teatime, I was sitting on the comfy sofa, dealing with some mindless nonsense on my iPad, eBay, possibly, when the gloomy message "You are not connected to the Internet" popped up in the middle of my screen.  I tried refreshing the screen.

Nope.

I went into Settings and tried to reconnect to the relevant WiFi thingy.

Nope.

I turned it off and on again.   The last resort.

Nope.  Well, bollocks.

On further investigation (going upstairs and glaring at the blue lights on the BT Homehub box) it was clear that my Internet connection was broken.  Mr WithaY emerged from his study, blinking in the light, and asked if there was a problem with the phone, as his Internet wasn't working.  A second investigation revealed that the OTHER BT Homehub box (yes, yes, yes, we have two, long story, probably going to get rid of one this year) wasn't working either.

The handset on the phone in the hall displayed the message "Check Line Cord" which we know from experience means Serious Issues With The Phone.  As we live in the Village Of No Mobile Reception, we couldn't ring BT to let them know, so left it till the next day, hoping that the phone line might have magically sorted itself out overnight.

I went to work on Sunday morning, and was not particularly surprised when a neighbour from further up the road called in to ask if our phone worked.  The shop phone did, but I told him our home phone was out of order.

"So's ours! And all the neighbours' on either side! AND the phone box!" he told me.  He'd already been on the (mobile) phone to BT to report the fault, which meant finding a spot at the top of the hill by the church where there's intermittent reception, and then spending almost £10 on his emergency pay as you go mobile whilst BT kept him on hold. He wasn't happy.

One of the more endearing quirks of reporting a fault to BT is their insistence that you listen to their instructions about resolving faults at your end.  They ought to call it It's All Your Faults.  They insist that you check that your phone isn't unplugged, or the dog hasn't eaten your WiFi box, or the house hasn't burned down while you weren't concentrating, and only then will they agree to send out an engineer.  Even then, you have to agree to pay a huge fee (almost £200!) if they find that it's Your Fault.

Anyhoo, the fault had been raised with BT, so I rang them as well, told them that our phones were also affected, and agreed to hand over a huge sack of cash if it turned out not to be their problem.  On leaving work, I spotted a BT engineer doing something at the base of the telephone pole on the corner. I wandered over to see.

Me:  Hello.  Have you come to fix all our phones?

Engineer:  Hello.  Yes.

Me:  So what's the problem?

Engineer:  Well.  Look.

The engineer gestured at the thick black cable that runs up the length of the phone pole.  It had been neatly cut in half about a foot from the ground.  A myriad of small wires poked out of the two severed ends.

Me:  Ah.

Engineer: (wearily) Yep, this is me for the next couple of hours.

He declined the offer of a cup of tea, so I left him to it.  By the time it was dark, his van had gone, and so had he, and the broken cable was all patched back up.  However, the phones still weren't working.

I went to work on Monday morning.  To my non-astonishment, a neighbour came in to ask if our phone worked.  I told her it did, and asked if her's was out of order.

"Not exactly," she told me.  "My number is now in Jean's house.  And Jean's number is ringing in my house."

Ah.

As more people came into the shop, it became clear that a terrible, terrible thing had happened to our phones.  We all had each others' numbers, but nobody knew who had which, or where they were calling.  I tried calling both our numbers from the shop phone but they just rang endlessly so I gave up.

Once again, BT were called.  Once again I had to agree to give them all my money if the fault was mine.  I explained that at least 12 houses were affected, and that it was most likely that the problem rested with the massive severed cable that had been sellotaped back together inaccurately.

Early on Monday morning, a BT engineer appeared at my house.  I explained the situation at length.

Me:  BT have run line tests and said my phone is fine, but look - there's no dial tone."  My voice might have gone a bit squeaky as I waved the dead handset about.

Engineer:  (backing away slightly) Ok...so...your phone is dead.  And yet we have a good line signal.  (He looked at his electronic handset thingy, then back at my dead phone.)

Me:  YES.  My phone number works, just not in my house!

Engineer: Ok.  I'll get on with this then.  (More fiddling with his tricorder) Ah, your phone is ringing at a Mr Sanders' house.  Do you know him?

Me: (coldly) No.

(He went back out to his van, possibly to have an aspirin.)

An hour or so later, both our phones were working, and we had Internet access once more.  Hurrah.  The engineer stood on the doorstep chatting cheerfully as we said our goodbyes.

Me: And will you be going to all the other houses now to sort them out too?

Engineer:  Um.  What other houses?

I told him about all the neighbours' phone issues, and the phone box.  He was appalled.

Engineer:  I only have two call-outs for today, and neither of them are in this village!

Me:  Well, there are at least a dozen houses with this problem.  And the phone box.

Engineer:  So why haven't they reported them?

Me: No phones! No Internet!  No mobile reception!

When I went to work that afternoon, there was a huge BT cherrypicker truck with a bloke deedily reattaching wires at the top of the phone pole.  It was there quite a while.

In other news, I am now working full-time in the village shop.  I really like it.  There's a shift pattern which suits me well, as you do four days on, two days off, so your days off vary from week to week, and even on the days you work you either have a morning or an afternoon to yourself.

The first couple of late shifts I did were nerve-racking, as you have to lock everything and set alarms and so on, but once I got the hang of it, it was fine.  It's sociable and friendly, and apart from my feet hurting at the end of a shift - there's nowhere to sit for most of the time - I like it very much.  I daresay my feet will adapt.

A customer came in the other day, bought a few bits and pieces, and then gave me a handful of change to pay for it.  As he dropped the money into my hand I realised it was sticky. Very, very sticky.

Me:  Ewww! What's all over this money? Why is it so sticky?

Customer: (who was very, very Welsh)  Oh, sorry love,  That's just orange juice.

Me:  Really.

Customer:  Yeah. Had a bit of an accident in my cab, see.  Sorry about that.

Me:  Orange juice.  Hmmm.

Customer:  Yeah, it is, honest.  Go on! Smell it!

Pleuk.