Monday
When I got a letter from our local hospital, inviting me to a telephone consultation with one of the urology team, I didn’t give the matter much thought. My kidney stone was no longer giving me any pain and I assumed it had either passed or had found its way into a place where it couldn’t do much harm. Big mistake, as the consultant brushed aside my insistence that the hospital must be rushed off its feet with Covid cases and told me the stone was in an awkward place, the hospital had available beds and I needed urgent surgery to remove it. After that, things moved at remarkable speed and within a matter of weeks I was under the knife in a private hospital – the NHS had taken over some of its spare capacity – as a day case. I’d love to be able to say that I took it all in my stride, but the reality was that I was scared stiff. Principally because I had made the elementary error of asking if the procedure carried any risks and I didn’t find the 2% chance of post-op infection to be particularly reassuring. A one in 50 probability of something going wrong seemed rather on the high side. Still, I didn’t seem to have much choice – other than to completely ignore all the medical advice – and so I came out of the operating theatre minus a stone but plus a temporary stent. That, too, has thankfully now been removed and, having passed the dates by which an infection could occur, I am now more or less back to normal. Though I did feel surprisingly roughed up by the whole experience. I’m sure that in the past, I was a much more stoical hypochondriac.
Tuesday
Shortly after six in the evening some weeks ago, my wife got a call from a withheld number that she tried to switch off. By a stroke of luck she pressed the wrong button on her phone and found she was talking to our local GP’s surgery who were running a vaccination centre just up the road. They were about to pack up, had had a couple of no-shows and the jabs were ours if we could get to the church hall in the next 10 minutes. We were in the car within next to no time. It was a surprisingly moving experience, not least because the medical team at the centre seemed almost as emotional about the experience as we were to be there. They weren’t just offering a vaccine, they were also delivering hope. Even though I can get still get slightly paranoid if people come too close to me in the park and I have had the odd bout of vaccine envy – though luckily the Oxford AstraZeneca is back in fashion – for the first time in almost a year, I can feel a little less afraid of the coronavirus. Not that we were the first members of the family to be offered the vaccination. Over in the US, teachers are considered to be key workers and our daughter, Anna, has already had both her jabs. With luck that means she might be able to come over and visit us some time later in the spring for the first time in about 18 months. It’s been far too long and I’ve missed her dreadfully.
Wednesday
The timing could have been better. In the week that the government announced it was cutting aid to Yemen – potentially making the humanitarian crisis even worse – we hear that the prime minister is considering setting up a charitable foundation to help pay for the refurbishment of the flat in No 10. Curiously, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson neither confirms nor denies the reports, so we are left to guess whether they are in fact true. Though given that this is the sort of embarrassing story Downing Street would normally be looking to kill at the earliest opportunity, it seems fairly reasonable to assume there must be some truth in it. Which raises some interesting questions about Johnson’s lifestyle choices and attitude to money. If Boris wants to spend a rumoured £70K more than the basic £30K refurb package – a perk every new prime minister is given to spend on the grace-and-favour flat when first elected – then that is of course up to him, but he seems to have forgotten he gets an annual salary to help cover the difference. In Boris World it is for the public to pay for the cost of the decorations, even if he only occupies the flat for four and a half years: as if he is the one who is doing the country a favour by being prime minister. Equally curious is just who Johnson imagines will be willing to fork out for his lifestyle upgrades. Will each room come with a plaque saying: “This room has been sponsored by...”? Or how about a Tory fundraising dinner – when restrictions allow – in which one of the prizes is a weekend sleepover in the flat the highest bidder has just paid to decorate?
Thursday
It seems that I might actually be almost on trend. For most awards ceremonies, actors consider it essential to come dressed in the latest designer clobber. But for this week’s Golden Globe awards, Jane Fonda kept her word not to be defined by unnecessary consumption and arrived wearing an old white trouser suit that came straight from her own wardrobe. Obviously there are differences – Fonda is naturally stylish, me not so much – but had I been going to the Golden Globes, I too would have been forced to dig out an old favourite as I now realise I have bought no new clothes, apart from two pairs of socks, whatsoever in the past year. Not that I ever spent much on clothes, more that lockdown and the coronavirus have made me lose all interest in what I wear. On a good day, I can aspire to jeans, T-shirt and a sweater; on a bad one, it’s tracksuit bottoms and a moth eaten hoody. The idea of dressing up to go to work in a jacket, shirt and smartish pair of trousers feels like something from another era. And it’s not just my sartorial standards I have let slip: I now find it increasingly difficult to hold proper conversations with other people. And I’m not alone. In the early days of the pandemic I would ring various friends regularly and we would always manage to find something to natter about. Now our conversations have just become more and more meta as the only thing we have to say to each other is how little we have to say to each other. How are you? Much the same as yesterday. What are you planning on doing? Much the same as yesterday. Soon we will be down to a series of pre-verbal grunts. When the end of the lockdown finally arrives, there will be a lot of social skills I have to relearn.
Friday
In what is thought to be a unique case, the Church of England has granted permission to a 44-year-old woman to be buried in the same Yorkshire churchyard as the poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, despite the fact she currently lives 200 miles away in Oxfordshire. The unnamed woman made the request after visiting the churchyard where her literary heroine is buried and feeling what she described as a “profoundly spiritual” connection with the location. All of which made me realise I probably haven’t given enough thought to what happens to my remains after I’ve died, other than the fact I want to be cremated rather than buried and would rather my ashes weren’t just interred in a local cemetery with no meaningful association to me, where no one will ever come to visit them. I suppose what happens rather depends on who dies first, me or my wife, as it would be nice to end up alongside each other. Her preference is for a woodland burial, so if I die before her maybe I could hang around in an urn at home until such time my wife dies and then we can get dug in together. Or maybe I can just have some of my ashes alongside my wife and have the rest informally dispersed at a variety of locations. Call it guerrilla burial. A bit of me near my dad might be cosy. And the dog, assuming I outlive him. I’m also fairly sure that Spurs don’t allow people to have their ashes scattered on the pitch, but it would be hard to prevent my friend Matthew from smuggling in a small handful of my dust and sprinkling it under my seat at the ground. I can then either be blown around, rained on or swept up. After all the pain the club has put me through over the decades, that seems like the least it could do in return.
Digested week: Brand Rishi: The 1% pay rise for nurses.
