Well I am slowly starting to feel better again, and I’ve had a few much-needed calls with good friends which has certainly helped with my crappy mood.

The last few days I’ve just felt tired, knackered, exhausted, and had near-constant headaches. The trouble is I can’t tell how much of it is a Covid-relapse, and how much is just tiredness from being stuck at home alone with a 3-year old with no break, rest, or respite while trying to recuperate, and how much is due to having a low mood and feeling really miserable and down in general.

On Friday, I realised that I need to keep my poor car Polly running long enough for us to be able to collect the new car, and the battery keeps dying due to total lack of use. It is a struggle to start these days at all, and so we decided to take a drive.

Now technically we’re isolating and can’t go anywhere or come into contact with any people, even though it’s clearly a false positive test at this point, so you know what we did?

We drove around the ring road. We aimlessly circled Oxford. That’s how rock and roll my life is now.

We couldn’t use the Sat Nav, as it’s software designed to take you to your destination via the shortest/fastest route possible, so it’s very hard to make it take you in an aimless circle with no purpose only to bring you back home where you started.

Turns out the ring road is harder to navigate than I anticipated, so we managed to get lost twice, which feels like a new low.

We drove for 24 miles, and with the wrong turns drove for almost 50mins, which I hope is enough to keep the car battery going a bit longer. The kid had a mini nap in the car, so it was surprisingly peaceful just driving in a big circle around and around. It’s really sad but it felt like an outing, and it’s the furthest we’ve physically been from the house in about 5-6 weeks. If you’d told me a year ago that I would consider driving aimlessly around the city with no purpose or reason an exciting trip out I’d have thought you were insane.

Now, of course when you’re isolating you’re supposed to stay at home, but frankly after 16 days straight in serious hardcore didn’t-leave-the-house isolation as a single mum alone with a toddler, and then going into another 10 days, I feel that our sad, aimless drive around the ring road was ok and was still within the spirit of the law – we stayed in the car the whole time, didn’t stop anywhere and didn’t go near anyone else – which is more than Dominic Cummings can claim…

Was our journey essential?

For Polly, yes, she barely started and needs to limp along a bit more until we can go get our new car.

For the sake of my mental health – also yes, but I don’t know how essential my personal mental health is to the people who make the rules.

On Sunday I had another bad day – shocking headache all day and super tired. I had to give in and take a nap at 3pm as I physically couldn’t stay awake any longer so the kid watched cartoons while I dozed on the sofa, then got an early night. I’m chomping through paracetamol and drinking tons of water but it doesn’t seem to help at all with the headaches, feels like my brain is being squeezed in a vice. My temperature is still going up and down and is higher than it should be. I am still getting little mini-flushes of fever now and again, and in general my resting body temp is definitely higher than it normally is though I haven’t had a proper fever again since Tuesday.

Hoping it starts to get better soon, it’s all very very boring now, I’m tired and fed up and cross with it all, and just so over it. Something is just not right with my body at all, and I’m really bored of waiting to see what it will do next.

Only 5 more days in isolation to go….