Three weeks ago, I was tested as Covid-19 positive.

Given my Covid scepticism (including the testing regime that has become so prevalent), it may come as more a surprise I even took the test than this was the first time I have taken the DIY lateral flow test, to be followed three days later with the PCR test. My rationale was that a member of my household had earlier tested positive and I felt I should take the test despite feeling ok at the time. Ten days later, I took another test, showing I was no longer Covid-19 positive.

My own experience is nothing new of course and three weeks on I still have not fully recovered, given I am still coughing and spluttering (although it is lessening), but thanks to my loving wife I am being well looked after. Even so, the day following that first test, I began to feel awful and very tired and listless, exhibiting what I can best describe as classic flu symptoms. Given I am now “retired” and don’t have too many face to face commitments and can often pick and choose anyway, the worst thing, besides feeling more toward the death warmed up rather than pink of health extremes on the “how I feel health spectrum”, was I decided it best to opt out of the few meetings I was down to attend, and had to send my apologies.

I tried not to broadcast the fact, out of (so I am told – pride and prejudice) as some of my “friends” have brought into the fear, lockdown, mask and vaccination propaganda we have been subjected to these past two years, with the focus now on Ukraine and the bad President Putin, and I have heard stories of anti-vax etc. skeptics dying of Covid (even though I note many triple vaxed folk have had Covid bad). But here is to setting the record straight. My Covid experience has been real and painful and, if there has been a positive as I recover, it has helped me to be thankful and humble.