A week of illness: the kind of illness that you can’t quite pin down as anything diagnosable. Even worse than usual lethargy, brain fog, shortness of breath, plenty of coughing… could this be Covid? It’s still around. I’ve only tried to test myself once, in Boots, on the way to the station, en route to a function I really didn’t want to go to. I forget what now. The test was negative but that might have been because I didn’t push the thing up my nose far enough. When I was younger I would put all sorts of things up my nose but the joy has gone out of that and I have become timid. They say you have to push it so far up you feel as though you’re doing yourself some damage; who wants to do that? I have a vivid imagination, and have had visions of a ruptured blood vessel and my vital fluids gushing uncontrollably all over Boots’ terrified customers.
I was wheezing back from the shops a couple of days ago and paused not only for breath but to examine the household items that had been left outside for collection by anyone who needed them. I scored a bookcase the other day, thus doubling the amount of shelf space in the Hove-l. On this occasion the items on offer were, nested together, a roasting pan, a rusty wok, and a slipper. “Take a wok on the wild side,” I said to myself, but left it, and then noticed the Flowflex Sars-Cov-2 Antigen Rapid Test (Self-Testing) box. It seemed to be virgo intacta so I put it in my shopping bag. It’s still there, I think. I wonder how long it will last, unopened. Probably a good long while. A couple of years ago I saw that a firm offering DNA kits was having a half-price sale and so, in one of my occasional surges of curiosity about my origins, being a bit drunk, and somehow having a spare £39.95 in my account, I bought one. When it arrived I saw that even before you did something with the kit you had to register online so I thought screw that for a game of soldiers. It is still in the fridge. I wonder if I will ever use it. Do I really need to know exactly how French I am? I am pleased to carry a French surname but then so does Mark Francois so it doesn’t really mean anything. Farage too, come to think of it.
Talking of disgusting politicians, I just about stayed up late enough last week to catch the beginning of the Donald Trump/Kamala Harris debate. I do not think Harris is disgusting. It’s the other one. I was tired and there wasn’t any booze in the flat and after the first few seconds I switched off. I was on the verge of sleep and didn’t want to pass out with Trump’s voice ringing in my ears. He has invaded my dreams enough as it is. Anyway, I reckoned that I’d get a pretty accurate and also amusing précis from my friend Ben the next morning.
He did not disappoint. He started off on Trump’s claims that illegal immigrants were eating the pet dogs and cats of the good people of Springfield, Ohio.
“I remember when I was about nine, and people were saying at school that immigrants were eating people’s dogs and cats. You remember that? It was a common accusation around then. I mentioned it to my dad and he said: ‘Think about it for a second. Which is easier? Chasing down someone’s cat, catching it, skinning it, and gutting it, or going to the supermarket to pick up a chicken?’ ‘Yeah, now you put it like that…’”
We then moved on to the question of Trump’s base. “I mean, f*****g hell, come on. The state of them. Imagine if you were holding a dinner party and one of them turned up. With a stars and stripes top hat, a fake bandage on their ear and carrying a little pot labelled ‘JD Vance’s spunk’. You wouldn’t let them in. You’d say ‘I’m sorry, you’re not coming in like that. Sort yourself out, mate. An ordinary person would bring a bottle of wine.’” This made me laugh a bit too much and I started a wheezing coughing fit.
“Ben, I have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,” I said. “If you make me laugh, it’s murder.” Saying something like this to a natural comic only encourages them and Ben went on but I didn’t catch everything that he was saying because everything was going blue round the edges. I thought of the man who died of laughter while watching The Goodies.
I’ve since recovered. The lethargy is still there but this time it’s because I don’t want to do anything, not because I can’t. The lung problems are pretty much here to stay and as for the brain fog I shall leave it to you to decide whether this column has been written by someone not mentally firing on all cylinders. My test for this is to see if I can remember certain names, especially indie band members of the 1980s. I saw a clip of Dexys Midnight Runners singing “Geno”, which was superb, but then went into a panic because I couldn’t remember the lead singer’s name. That’s it, I thought, that’s the first thing to go. It’s all downhill from here. And then the next day his name popped back into my head. Do you know it without looking it up? If I push a Covid swab too far up my hooter will it puncture my brain and make me forget it again?
[See also: Listening to Debussy at thrash metal volume]
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This article appears in the 18 Sep 2024 issue of the New Statesman, What’s the story?