Self-pity and self diagnosis

Is it possible to have Long Covid when you haven’t actually had Covid?
I’m sick of feeling run down, tired and mentally exhausted. There must be some reason. Maybe it’s the ongoing affects of working through all the lockdowns in an industry that constantly had problems with supplies, and constantly had problems with workforce, and constantly had to deal with complaints, but constantly had to stay open as usual. Maybe it’s the affects of working an incredibly busy stint of time in a brand new industry, where I’m learning as I go and therefore not relaxing at all. Maybe it’s the ongoing effects of having an energetic two-year-old charging round the house[GP1] . Maybe it’s the accumulating depression caused by repetitive non-Summer days in August. Maybe it’s a combination of all that.
The good thing is I’m not moaning about it, or going on and on about it in my blog….
I’m going to have an early night tonight and hope to wake up in a September that will be much, much better (both physically and meteorologically).

RC 31-8-21

The joys of non-related grandparents

We had our day with Ted and Beryl yesterday and I think I’m still digesting the food now. Beryl was very Beryl, as Beryl as she has ever been, and served up enough grub to feed a legion of battle-weary Vikings. There wasn’t, as I had expected, an onslaught of pre-Christmas samples and selections, it was more of an indoor barbecue featuring weird and wonderful ways of marinating meat that she has discovered since becoming internet-savvy at a late age. I did eat rather a lot of dessert, especially. So much so that I had a weird dizzy spell at about 4pm that I am firmly blaming on the sugar intake. It was like a one-off, warning shot diabetes episode. Crumble, as far as I am aware (having never made it myself) is mostly made of butter and sugar. Beryl had made a rather large one, filled with her home-made strawberry jam. So we had a crumble that is mostly sugar, filled with a filling that is mostly sugar, and then topped with some very sugary home-made custard. No wonder my vision went fuzzy and my head was spinning.
I’m trying to give myself a few days respite now by eating nothing but toast and salad until my blood sugar levels get somewhere close to where they should be.
Mathew had a bit of a kip late in the afternoon. He had worn himself out completely charging around the garden and then doing gymnastics in the living room. For some reason, since catching me watching the Olympics, he is convinced he can do everything the British gymnastics team can do, and takes great delight in tumbling and throwing himself around whichever room he is in, in front of whatever audience he may have. Beryl loved every second of it and awarded him a gold medal, by which she meant a very large bar of chocolate that happened to have a yellow wrapper.
While he slept off his exhaustion, we had a few games of cards, and a game of Scrabble in which Ted got increasingly frustrated by Beryl’s habit of putting her tiles in the exact spot Ted had been playing to play his on his next turn.
It was all lovely, but I did have a strange, depressing moment of realisation at about 6.45pm. I went to use the loo. I looked out of the window and saw the trees being blown about below dark grey skies and I thought “I’m glad I’m indoors with a jumper on”. The whole thing had the feel of a pleasant January Sunday, and then the realisation hit me that we’re STILL IN AUGUST! That hit me between the eyes like a painful reminder of the horrors of Summer 2021. And it was very depressing to watch it get dark by the time we had driven home.
Sorry to go on about the same old topic again, but it’s not just me. I had a little walk today and I met three different people while I was out and they all mentioned the same thing and commented on how it’s affecting them. “I guess we can say goodbye to Summer”, “We haven’t even had a barbecue this year” and “It’s all a bit depressing really, isn’t it?” are just a selection of quotes from our encounters.
Anyway – onward and upward. Time for me to grill some pork chops and lay them atop some spicey couscous, before adorning them with a large side-salad, drizzled with lemon olive oil.

RC 30-8-21

Another dull day

I don’t want to go on about the weather again, but I must acknowledge that it affects me, and today felt like an early Winter Saturday. I thought “Sod it! I’ll show this bastard climate and defy it by having a barbecue anyway!” but it was too windy in our garden to get the coals going!
Stupid country.
My only hope is that we have a September and October that are both in the 20s Celsius and full of blazing sunshine.

We’re seeing Ted and Beryl tomorrow. Knowing her, she’s already planning for Christmas, so there’ll be loads of cakes and pastries and biscuits as she starts practising early to get them right before December. Mathew is excited about going. He loves the non-stop attention and spoiling he gets from Beryl, and he seems to be utterly captivated by Ted. It’s strange, because Ted isn’t exactly the most child-friendly of octogenarians, and yet Mathew can’t get enough of him.

Working Saturday’s is ok, but I do miss those garage times when I got to be at home on both days at the weekend, and often the Monday too.
What am I saying?
Talk about engineering things to moan about in your current situation by lying to yourself about the past – even when I had days off from the garages, I was having to check on staff and deal with Management e-mails, so I may have been ‘at home’ but it wasn’t exactly relaxing. Yes, I think I’ll stay where I am now, thanks.

RC 28-8-21

Non-Summer Summer Fri-ku

Constant dull grey skies
My mood sinks lower than mud
And I pray for Sun

When was it last hot?
When did we last see blue sky?
When did I last smile?

Holidaymakers
Trying to enjoy Suffolk
When it’s damp and cold

Let’s change the subject
The Paralympics are on
So why should I moan?

Wheelchair basketball
Is one of my Top 10 Sports
And it’s on today!

RC 27-8-21

Don't know what to call this one

A great quote from someone I met during my walkabout today:
“If we book to come back the same week next year, can you guarantee we’ll have Summer weather?”
He was perfectly serious too – as if my powers as part of the management team extend to controlling the climate around the Centre. I told him we tend to get brighter, warmer days in July and maybe he should think about coming then instead.
I wonder what kind of upbringing some British children are getting when their parents display intelligence like that. None of my business, I guess. I just have to concentrate on raising my own offspring in a way that gives them a chance of a decent life.
Blimey – went off on a bit of a weird tangent there.

Someone in the office pointed out that it’s only two weeks until all the children in England go back to school. That blew my mind, as the kids say, and knocked me sideways, as my generation would prefer. I keep worrying about how well I’ll cope with my first Summer Holidays in this job, and I’m already two-thirds of the way through them! And I seem to have coped fine so far. Admittedly, it probably helped having a week or so off for non-Covid Covid-related issues but even so – I have to say it has all gone rather well, considering my inexperience and constant confusion.
I don’t suppose we’ll notice much difference when schools re-open anyway, as we’re at almost full capacity all the way through to the October half-term. That, of course, is assuming there won’t be another school-return-related wave of infections that blows the non-lockdown way of life out of the water and plunges us back into restrictions.
My, I am just a sparkling ray of optimism, am I not?

RC 26-8-21

More film stuff

This is how I distract myself when we’re having late-Autumn weather in August:

CHANGING ONE LETTER IN A MOVIE TITLE TO MAKE IT A VERY DIFFERENT FILM -

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Vest
The Mood Dinosaur
Shakespeare in Hove
Apocalypse Sow
The Lust of The Mohicans
The Amazing Spider-Mat
A Raver Runs Through it
The Planet of the Apps
One Dour Photo
Sliding Coors

‘Apocalypse Sow’ is one I would particularly like to see – a violent thriller in which a possessed, and possibly pregnant, female pig hunts down the farmers who stole her from her mother and then gets the blood lust and goes on a killing spree attempting to wipe out the entire human race. I see Liam Neeson as a grizzled vet leading the team trying to contain her.

RC 25-8-21

Too much brown ground

They have ploughed a couple of the fields that I drive past on my journey into work, so the countryside has taken on even more of a Wintry look.
I’m trying to lift my mood by telling myself that we’re going to have an exceptionally hot September, and an October that feels more like Summer than Autumn. I don’t think its beyond the realms of possibility. Recent times have seen some very mild months at the end of the year. In fact, I might even go so far as to say (and I think I probably have at least once in the past) that our Seasons have been shifted so far out of whack that they’re now unrecognisable from the way they were when I was young. Bonfire Night now seems to take place in late Summer, Christmas is far more likely to have bright days that snow, and when we change the clocks in March, we still have 3 more months of cold weather to face, whereas in my youth it signalled the start of Spring.
Stupid climate.

RC 24-8-21

Films, films, films...

With the weather having been un-Summery, and with me being forced to isolate recently, I have managed to see a few movies that had either a) passed me by, or b) begged me for a repeat viewing. I’m not in the mood to write long reviews of all of them, but I don’t want to fob you off with a simple, truncated line of highlights. So here I bring back (because I’m pretty certain I’ve done this before) RORY’S 10-WORD FILM THOUGHTS:

21 Grams – Not a barrel of laughs, but wonderfully acted and filmed.
The French Connection – Slightly dated, but deserving of its status as a ‘classic’.
Aliens – 35 years old! Still sets the bar for action movies.
The Peanut Butter Falcon – Beautiful. Funny. Inspiring. Poignant. Beautiful. Ground-breaking. Did I mention ‘beautiful’?
All Is True – The first thing involving Ben Elton worth watching since Blackadder.
Lucky – Instantly on my all-time favourite list. RIP Harry Dean Stanton.

And hyphenated words count as one word, and so do numbers, and so do acronyms, so shut up.

RC 23-8-21

Yet another chilly day

I watched the final of The Hundred tonight (the English attempt to replicate the fun and games of the Indian Premier League without directly copying it). I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I did find myself getting drawn into it. I guess when you’re missing the Olympics, any old sniff of sport will do.

The weather is really dragging me down. I hate Winter, especially when it’s happening in August! Normally, my way of dealing with the darker months works like this: the first few months, I am still basking in the delight of the Summer I have just been through; then for the next few months I am looking ahead to the Summer that is on the way. But when there hasn’t been a Summer placed in the memory banks for me to call back on, how am I supposed to survive a long, dark, cold Winter? I’m feeling close to suicidal now, what the Hell will I be like in January?

On a more cheerful note, I watched “21 Grams” again last night. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a woman who loses her husband and two daughters in a car accident, a man who has a heart transplant and then gets shot in the chest, and a reformed alcoholic who struggles to connect with his family after being released from prison. Heavy going, but it’s a remarkable film.
And don’t have a go at me about spoiling any plot points – its nearly 20 years old.

RC 21-8-21

I miss the Olympics, and isolation

Had a day of feeling really tired today. I guess it’s my body still getting over last week’s attack of plague and reacting to being back at work for a few days. 

I bought myself a big fan for the office in June, in anticipation of a long, hot Summer. That may be the worst purchase I’ve ever made in my life.

To be fair – we did get a brief, much-longed-for glimpse of Summer this evening. A patch of blue sky, roughly measuring sixteen feet by twenty five, appeared near the horizon between 7.15 and 7.28 pm tonight.

RC 20-8-21

Miss Alford, and miseating

I don’t know why I’ve remembered this, but today is the birthday of a teacher I fancied at college. Weird thing to know in the first place, much less think about 20 years later, but there we are. I would blame the temperature, but I’m actually feeling better now. Maybe I’ll blame the temperature outside, as it is yet again cold enough to pass for January.
This year has been an absolute tosser, weatherly speaking. Spring lasted about 4 days, and Summer simply hasn’t happened at all. Anyway, I mustn’t dwell on that, or I’ll be suicidal by November.

My taste buds seem to have been affected by last week’s illness, after all. Either that, or my relationship with food is in a state of flux and rebirth. I’ve gone off coffee completely, I keep getting the urge to buy licorice, and if I don’t cut down my intake of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles I’ll have dangerously high blood pressure by Christmas. I might blame the other people I work with. Apart from Samantha, who is one of the retail managers, the team seems to be comprised of snack-happy, indulgent, chocaholic grazers. There are only 3 of us who don’t smoke. It’s a pretty unhealthy workforce and I find myself playing along and succumbing to the temptation of bad choices. It might also be a bit of a hangover from the supermarket garage days, when I had a ready supply of unhealthy options and a quiet office in which I could munch them. I may have accidentally trained my brain to associate management with gluttony.
Oh, well. At least I’m not buying heroin, and the eating helps to ease the pain of the climate.

RC 18-8-21

Damper than a runner's gusset

What an absolutely shitty day.
I had to check the calendar this afternoon to see if it was, as I suspected, still the middle of August. Can you believe how cold and wet today has been? We had the heating on in some parts of the buildings today. Don’t be feeling sorry for me though – I’m feeling much better after my bout of non-Covid coronavirus, and rather pleased to be back at work. Not that today has been a barrel of laughs on the employment front either. As you can imagine, there were many holidaymakers who were not best pleased that their long-awaited trip away to ‘The Sunniest Site in Suffolk’ was being spent wearing coats and jumping over puddles. I had to explain several times that we are not responsible for the weather, but some people always need to moan at someone when things don’t go how they want them to, I guess.
A curious side-effect of my little chesty/throaty/achey week of woes – my voice seems to be a lot deeper now than it was 10 days ago. I sound gravelly, masculine and echoey. I might try and get some work as a voice-over guy for film trailers. I’ve been in this job for 6 months now, so it’s probably time for a change.…

RC 17-8-21

Phlegm-less menu ahoy

Man, I feel almost like myself again. I can walk around the house without ending up breathless, I can inhale deeply through clear, unclogged nostrils and I can move my head without going dizzy or getting pounding temples.
Joy.
I am going to celebrate by cooking a large joint of roast gammon, and will be adorning it with a side dish of my legendary, patented Chesworth Cauliflower Cheese. I hate not having an appetite, but when your throat feels like its been scoured with a metal loofah it’s hard to enjoy your food, so the past few days have been awful. Porridge, soup and pasta have been the only things I can ingest without feeling on the verge of vomiting. Today, though, I can taste clearly, breathe while chewing, and I have the energy to stand at the cooker peeling vegetables, so you can bet your fat arse I’ll be enjoying myself. I’ll get some rocking tunes banging through the bluetooth speaker and I’ll be glazing carrots in honey and coating potatoes in marmite prior to roasting.
Dishing up about 5pm, if you’re interested.

RC 14-8-21

Day late Friday the 13th Fri-ku

Naff superstition
Nothing is diff'rent today
Bad luck is a myth

RC 14-8-21

A lesson learned; a load lifted

I feel slightly less unwell today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not signing up for the London Marathon or skipping through the daisies at the park, but I can breathe without erupting into coughs and my joints don’t ache quite as much as they did earlier in the week.
Yesterday’s weirdness with the e-mail thing gave me something to think about while lying in bed feeling sorry for myself. I went through so much trauma during the day, and in the end it was nothing to be concerned about. The ‘problem’ was only ever in my head. I had made an assumption about Gavin’s reaction to my message, and the ramifications of that assumption dominated my thoughts for the next six hours. But none of it was right. I basically wasted the best part of a day contemplating my position at work, and seriously considering changing that position, when there was never any issue to deal with. 
Sometimes I think I must be female.
I have to give myself a bit of credit for getting it sorted before bedtime. It was mostly out of desperation, but ringing Gavin was the right thing to do. I went from a combination of despair and distraught and distraction to a combination of relieved and reassured. And then I could get some sleep, which is probably why I feel better today.

RC 13-8-21

A clearer picture

In the end, after hours of internal conflict and several sweaty panic episodes, I called Gavin on his mobile to discuss my e-mail, and his reply.
It was fine. All is good. Everything I had tied myself up in knots over was all in my head. He basically said, “I know it was a joke, and so was my reply. Don’t worry about it – I like my employees to face things with a bit of humour. Get yourself well and I’ll see you on Monday.”
Phew!

RC 12-8-21
2120 BST

Swimming in self-inflicted confusion

I jokingly asked today if I could join the many, many thousands of people who are continuing to work from home, even though it’s no longer legally required. It was only sent as a joke, but I think Gavin may have taken me seriously – I got a long e-mail from him explaining why it’s impossible for a manager to effectively be part of the team running three holiday centres without that manager being onsite.
Now I’m in a real dilemma. I don’t know whether to own up about it being a joke. I’m worried I might risk embarrassing him, or risk embarrassing myself, or risk making it sound like I WAS serious but now I’m trying to back down after reading his reply. He’s had a busy week dealing with half his management team isolating at home and now he has me adding to his woes with some silly attempt at humour. Have I blotted my copybook with him? Is he now sitting in his office berating me and regretting appointing me in the first place? Will this affect my ability to work with him and be taken seriously as we move forward with our working relationship? I’m still in a period of probation, for Christ’s sake, and here I am possibly sabotaging my own position by hitting ‘send’ before thinking things through.
God, why do I do these things to myself????

RC 12-8-21

A weird week

I’m still off work, and still not feeling great. It’s really hard to describe, but it feels sort of like goldfish are swimming around inside my head. And they’re swimming through really thick sludge that is also hot. It still hurts to breathe and my shoulders in particular are very achey. All in all, a poor show physically from The Body of The Rory.
Philippa wants me to go and see a doctor to check if I need antibiotics, (or she might have said antipsychotics which might be more appropriate, if I’m honest.) I’d rather wait a couple of days and see if it clears up nicely on its own. I’ve had a chest infection before and as unpleasant as this thing is, its nowhere near the horror of coughing up pints of green slime every day and hallucinating about vampire badgers while being unable to breathe in without feeling like the cast of Rampage is sitting on your chest. So I don’t think antibiotics are needed, or would help. You would think Philippa would be used to the annoyance of people unnecessarily pestering GP surgeries and not want to suggest it, but there we are. Each to their own.
I have to say, I am missing work, which feels really pleasant. In the past, I would have welcomed the chance to stay home on the sofa at the request of my boss, but with this job, it actually feels annoying to be away. I’m taking that as a sign that I made the right decision back in December (was it December??) I am looking forward to going back on Monday, and looking forward to being able to blog without my fingers feeling like they belong to someone else, and without it feeling like a monumental mental effort just to think of a couple of paragraphs to write.
Apologies for any errors – I am feeling crappy (but not Covid-y, apparently).

RC 11-8-21

A weird thought

I think the whole pandemic thing has made me realise how much I love eyes. They may be my favourite body part. They are certainly the ones I find most attractive. I’ve realised over the past year that everyone – no matter how ‘ugly’ they may be considered to be – has beautiful eyes. It’s a shame we’ve had to take masks off, if I’m honest, because I have fallen in love with a few people’s eyes this year only to now discover their faces are pretty horrible.

As you may have guessed, I’m still feeling rather lousy.

RC 9-8-21

Final Olympic Thoughts

I know lots of people were against it, and I know Tokyo is probably going to spend years trying to make up the money they lost by hosting the whole thing, but I have to say I am so glad they pushed ahead with the Olympics, because the last two weeks have been brilliant.

The Top 3 Events I Enjoyed Watching The Most:
GOLD – Surfing
SILVER – Climbing (especially the combined)
BRONZE – Mixed team triathlon
The open water swimming was a real thrill as well.

Paris is only three years away, which softens the impact of the post-Games blues a bit. Plus - when it gets here - it'll be in a similar time zone to us, so no more of this ‘waking up to find out how well we did rather than being able to watch it live’ rubbish. I think I might book the whole two weeks off work in 2024 so I can lose myself in an indulgent orgy of viewing. If the tickets aren’t ridiculously expensive (which, let’s be honest, they will be) I might even venture across the Channel to watch.

The National Anthem of Kenya sounds like the opening music for a movie based on The Bible.

I’m not particularly interested in where Lionel Messi ends up playing next season, but the story this week has reminded me why I don’t like football, and consider it to be well and truly f**ked as a sport and as a business. At the Olympics, we see people pushing themselves to the limit for the glory of a gold medal. Many of them make no money from their endeavours, and many of them end up out of pocket. Meanwhile, I read that Barcelona FC – one of the most successful club sides in the World – are more than a billion Euros in debt, and have to reduce their wage bill by 172million just to break even next season. That entire sport should be ripped up and restarted from scratch.

RC 8-8-21

A coughing catastrophe

I am caught in a Covid-caused isolation scenario. Let me say straight away – I have tested negative for coronavirus. But I am feeing incredibly shitty and have been for a few days now. It started with a tickly cough, but has developed over 48 hours or so into a full-blown Summer cold and possibly a minor chest infection. I am hot, fatigued, sniffly, with a pounding headache and lungs that feel like they’re full of feathers. I blame Catarina – one of the cleaners at one of our sites. I popped over for a visit and she was working away despite being in the throes of a snot tsunami. Now she is on the mend, but three of her colleagues (and me) have all ended up with the same thing. We’ve all had PCR tests, and all been given the all-clear, but the bosses are so worried about the whole Covid thing that they’ve ordered us all to stay home for a week. A bit of an over-reaction, I feel, but I can understand their reticence to have their holiday centres staffed by people who are displaying all the symptoms of the Delta variant, even when they’re confirmed as virus-free. I can’t imagine I’d be pleased if I arrived at my holiday location to find half the employees coughing their lungs up. And who am I to complain? It’s allowed me to watch more of the Olympics, and I have to be honest and say I’m not up to working anyway. Walking through the house to go to the toilet is leaving me breathless and sleepy; the last thing I need is a 10-hour shift at work.
I guess that when the science and medical people were warning us there’d be a post-facemask explosion of other viruses because no-one has been catching them for 18 months, they weren’t kidding. I feel utter crap.

RC 7-8-21

Yet more from the Olympics

The young women in the artistic gymnastics all had that sad ‘stolen childhood’ look in their eyes; that horrible vacant stare that hints at having suffered some terrible trauma. I suppose that’s what comes from being bullied by trainers from the age of 6, and constantly having your efforts judged arbitrarily.

What has happened to Gabby Logan? She used to be my favourite British sports presenter, but now she seems to have become a giggling unprofessional obsessed with in-jokes and boring reminiscences. She’s like a middle-aged mum trying to fit in with her trendy children and embarrassing them in the process.

The climbing may be rivalling the surfing as my favourite event of the Games so far. Ridiculously athletic, but also with a mind-bending element of intellectual problem solving. I have this strange vision that, with the way events are being selected these days, by the time we reach the Brisbane Olympics in 2032 we’ll have medals up for grabs in map reading.

How To Be A Post-Event BBC Interviewer:
Simple. You just ask these two questions – “You are Olympic Champion. How does that sound?” and “How long has this been a dream of yours?” and then you try and get them to cry by talking about their family back home.

I am already dreading the Closing Ceremony, and that awful post-Games depression period where it feels awful to wake up and not be able to watch some bizarre sporting event like Latvia versus Chinese Taipei at badminton.

RC 4-8-21