Caught Covid last week. Not wholly surprising. London is as busy as a beehive again and I’ve been on the Tube and in pubs. I *thought* it was a cold until Friday when I realised I couldn’t taste my toast. I’m lucky because it isn’t that bad – I’m tired and a bit achey but otherwise fine. So since Friday, my sofa and I have entered a relationship and I’ve achieved the following:

1. Watched the entirety of Maid (Netflix). Ten hours. Fairly bleak in parts but very good. Incredibly unnecessary and unsurprising observation but Andie MacDowell’s daughter (Alex, the main part) has phenomenal hair.
2. Took out an Apple TV subscription so I could finally watch The Morning Show, the one with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Why are more people not banging on about how good this is? The writing! The opening credits! The soundtrack! The debate about what makes good journalism! The hair! The examination of sexual politics in the workplace! It is all excellent and my GOD Jennifer Aniston knows how to wear a coat. So have also watched 10 hours of that now. Second series and another ten hours to go.
3. New low: ordered loo roll and firelighters from Sainsbury’s via Deliveroo. ‘Don’t come too close, I’ve got Covid,’ I told the delivery guy, who immediately leapt 10 foot in the air clutching a family-pack of Andrex.
4. Watched Passing, Rebecca Hall’s new film on Netflix. Also very good, very atmospheric, largely set in 1920s Harlem, although it’s in black and white if you’re the sort of wimp who can’t handle that. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know anything about racial passing until I read Brit Bennett’s sensational book, The Vanishing Half, and I don’t want to give away any spoilers here, but I really recommend that too if you’re in the market for a deeply moving novel about families, race, and why life pulls certain people in one direction and others in the opposite.
5. Spent half an hour changing my sheets, pausing between each pillowcase for breath as if each one was a Wainwright.
6. Attempted to continue writing my new book. Am very close to the end, but my brain is not working at full capacity so does anyone mind if I stop mid sentence with this novel and just write ‘THE END’?
7. Googled ‘can you drink wine with Covid.’ Not recommended according to most links.
8. Made some soup when I was feeling strong enough yesterday and realised that cooking with Covid (the title to a truly abysmal cookery book?) is almost impossible when one can’t smell anything. It’s an odd sensation to chop an onion and be unable to smell it, but somehow your eyes water anyway?? Nearly burned some sunflower seeds earlier and forgot about my baked potato for two hours because I couldn’t smell it from my sitting room. ‘Have you got a smoke alarm?’ my friend Holly asked nervously when I spoke to her last night.

Stay safe and if you’ve got a sore throat I highly recommend taking a lateral flow every day for a few days, since my tests didn’t show up as positive to begin with. Still, I’m going to have a black belt in television when I’m set free again, so that’s useful.