Plague diary

Day 6 of what appears to be covid-19. It's hard to tell since most of the symptoms are so generic and there is nearly zero testing in the UK. All I know for sure is that I've got a fever, some mild chest and throat symptoms and am exhausted all the time. The girl has a higher fever and is bouncing off the walls trying to find something to do. L and the baby are both fever and symptom free.

I was coping with working form home for 2 weeks before coming down with anything. I decided to self-isolate when someone on the floor above me at work tested positive. Most of my coworkers decided the same thing. I have to say that our conference calls became much more chatty once they became nearly the sole human interaction we could experience.

I'm still not sure how I caught this. Could be anywhere. Looking back at the 5-14 days before I felt anything, I'd not gone out much, but since I've been on pills that make me immunocompromised, it appears it doesn't take much. And when it hit, it came on pretty fast. I started feeling a sore throat at around 5-6am. By 11am I was completely wiped out and dropped off the conference call, saying I'd be out for a while. Hung up and and went to sleep.

The next day R came down with a fever, so I've been sleeping on an inflatable mattress in her room. Which is much better than the tiny sofa in the office I had been using. Since then, everything has shut, including schools. We're slowing running out of food, so I hope out grocery delivery does not get cancelled (like our last one was). Beyond that we're catching up on a lot of old Deep Space Nine

(With R's newfound interest in all things Trek, we've already watched all of Next Generation, plus 2 of the movies and a little Picard)

Unfortunately I don't have an extra energy to do useful things like clean the place, or file away the mess of papers which have accrued. The one night I stayed up late dealing with bills completely wiped me out, and I won't be doing that again.

To keep R in the right mood, on Friday I read her The Masque of the Red Death as a bedtime story. She absolutely loved the description of the Black Room – It sounds so beautiful. And she said that maybe this could happen to the Tories, which means she understood what the story was about.

Annoyingly the pleasure of when I get better will be diminished by the fact I've no idea if I've actually got covid-19 or am just sick. So when we all feel fine again we'll still be stuck here uselessly quarantined until 2021, at this rate. I've already written my MP get universal testing, I suggest you write yours too.

The next generation

We finally got R to watch Star Trek. It’s been about 5 years since we first tried and 3 years since the last attempt. But this time it seems to have stuck.

It all started out Saturday morning when listening to Underground from Labyrinth. I had an "all the things you like are connected" moment. Did you know that, for Labyrinth, David Bowie did the music, George Lucas produced it, Jim Henson from Sesame Street did all the goblins and creatures, and Gates McFadden, the Doctor from Star Trek, did the choreography.

The last bit L was unaware of, so after a quick check of her filmography online, confirming it was true, L suggested We haven't tried watching Trek for a while. Maybe she'll like it now.

Even R was up for it. So we agreed that, since it was clean-the-house day, we'd watch some episodes, clean a bit, and watch some more. In the end, we got through 8 episodes of The Next Generation and made a dent in the mess that just spontaneously generates in the house.

We started with episode 3 of season 3 because that was the first DVD we could find. It turned out to be a good place to start since that and the following 6 episodes were all self contained and needed no knowledge of who any of the people were or what the overarching story was. The most memorable episode to R was Who Watches the Watchers. She really identified with the primitive race being covertly observed and their leader who gets to tour the Enterprise (She says Nuria is her favourite character so far, even more than Data). Which makes sense because it really sets the scene of what's important in the series and from the viewpoint of an outsider.

At one point R had a wow moment when L pointed out that actor who played Picard was the Narrator on the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack.

Since then she's been asking to see another episode every day. Which is nice since it's always good to expand her horizons. I've seen the series enough that I've been bored of it, and it's also good to see it through fresh eyes with her. It's made me appreciate some things which I found very dull first time around.

Assorted highlights

How can she be 100 years old? Oh! She must be an alien!

They're all aliens. We knew she was an alien. It's got to be something else

... I think we'll catch the Romulans with their pants down...

With their pants down? What does he mean?

With their pants -?

A metaphor... goes on to explain it so we don't have to

After seeing Riker die in an alternate timeline Will is dead? Does he not appear in any more episodes after this? ... Wait... He's not dead. What happened?

No. He didn't die. dreading having to explain the next bizarre time travel episode