Corona Journal, 19 March: Day 4
8am I wake up to a text from my mum insisting that I go to A&E about my foot. I think this is a spectacularly bad idea. I ask my boyfriend about it (a junior doctor). He agrees that I should go. Wonder why he failed to mention this when I was crying in pain on a street corner, but decide not to pick a fight with someone I could well be quarantined with for the foreseeable future.
10am Get a Bolt to A&E. Our driver shows us photos of empty shelves in the supermarkets and tells us his theory about how ‘they’ are going to ‘destroy China’. I mostly laugh or remain silent.
11am Leave A&E with a massive clompy boot on my foot after an x-ray concludes I probably have a stress fracture. I call my boyfriend and ask him to use his NHS privileges to get me a free hot drink from Pret.
When he asks you to wear thigh high boots
4pm I’ve taken my bra off. Who knows when I will wear one again.
5pm Corona briefing. It is very important to have a routine to help protect your mental health in these uncertain times, which is why boyfriend and I have another rum and coke as we watch BoJo say lots of not very much.
The Kraken awakes
11pm After 2 rum and cokes and 2 glasses of wine, boyfriend, flatmate and I are inspired by the Royal Academy’s Twitter feed to draw our best hams. We give ourselves 5 minutes on the clock which, in retrospect, is too long. We video call our mums to judge them. Responses vary from, ‘have you been drinking?’ to ‘you woke me up for this?’ to ‘yes, obviously I will rate your ham drawings out of ten’. In a dramatic show of favouritism and a lack of appreciation for talent and satire, I lose with a total of 20 points out of a possible 30. Boyfriend wins with 24.5 and flatmate comes second with 22.5. I don’t have a strop but it’s a close call.
2am We stay up drinking and chatting about songs that should have been one hit wonders but aren’t, and artists who had successful solo careers. The night ends when we find an absolute banger by H & Claire from Steps and then I find an album full of hits that sound like they were sung by animals from Animal Crossing.