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Feeling much better today. I even managed a 6km run which was pretty easy, so glad to find out that my muscles haven't atrophied after all this illness. I would also think that that doesn't mean I have Covid, but who the fuck knows any more? This thing can kill you or you can not notice you had it. Oh for a consistent virus that either kills everyone or that you can carry on living with. Come on diseases. Sort it out. My test arrived and I stuck a cotton bud down my throat and then sent it off so I should hopefully find out just in time for Christmas if I am unclean.
Lots of fun with the kids today. We made paper chains, which I had loved doing as a kid - and only felt mildly nauseous when I realised that probably 45 years had passed since I last did this which may have fed into my later anxiety almost dream (see below) - and then played Father Christmas where one of us was Santa and the other two had to pretend to be asleep, but tried to get a glimpse or a photo of the mysterious visitor. Ernie Santa seemed to be filling his sack with toys that we already had and I accused him of being a burglar. But to be fair we have so many toys that I wouldn't mind it if Santa was actually a communist figure who redistributed wealth and took unused toys from families with too much and then gave them to families with nothing. Santa is a capitalist and keeps the system propped up by giving more presents to the rich and hardly anything to the poor. He's a fucking cunt.
Rather than spending all his time trying to work out who was naughty and who was nice (and arguably his determination of these qualities is just down to who has conformed or not acted like a child should act, so again, he's maintaining the status quo) maybe he should just keep an eye on who is being profligate and buying stuff they don't need or use and then once a year, collect the rarely used stuff and give it to someone who needs it. We could do this ourselves, of course, but Santa has all those resources to hand and also the magic sleigh etc so he could be really helpful here.
But it's not like Christmas is meant to be a time when we think of others. So bring on the gluttony and greed. I can't fucking talk about any of this. I am as bad as anyone. That's why I want someone magic to take this all out of my hands.
Later we'd play schools, which seemed like a bit of a strange thing to do on the first day of the school holidays, but Ernie had fun pretending to be each of his teachers in turn, who would immediately fall over when they tried to start a lesson.
I tried to have an early night, but started thinking about a play I was in in the second term of University and tried to visualise the poster (in the weird way I do it that doesn't involve being able to see anything) and then freaked myself out that nearly 35 years had passed since that production and that didn't seem possible and the resulting time quake left me shaky and confused and I had to go downstairs to get my mental balance back together. I think I'd been thinking of the scrapbook I'd kept of my University productions and the girlfriend who'd decided to decorate it with cut up bits of posters and flyers and I couldn't bear the fact that she is now in her mid-fifties. Luckily I didn't realise that I was 54, or it could have been much worse.
In the land between wakefulness and sleep it seemed impossible that my University days were more than ten years ago. These jolts must get even worse when you're in your seventies and eighties. Why did no one tell us that those days would not last forever? I mean loads of people said it, but why didn't they say it in a way that would make us understand and believe it?
In the cold light of twenty minutes later I couldn't quite understand why I'd had that moment of dread. That play had lasted a week and the relationship hadn't been much longer and I haven't thought of that girlfriend much, if ever in the last three decades. I suppose this time shift is just the first shoots emerging of the brain decay that comes with old age, when you still think you're 18 or (like my grandma) the only person you remember is your dad.
For the moment it's just a few minutes where the passage of time makes no sense and you forget which part of life you're in and feel discombobulated. But one day that will be your constant state.
