Covid cleared

This morning I drove to the site of the now closed Whitchurch Mental Hospital as it was called in my youth, to be swabbed for my covid PCR test at one of two Portacabins set up under a large canopy in the hospital car park. My only recollection of visiting the hospital was when I was a teenager, accompanying my father to visit his younger brother Douglas, diagnosed schizophrenic, and incarcerated here after going AWOL from army boot camp at Sennybridge near Brecon, and found wandering, out of his mind, on the moors nearby. He eventually died there of throat cancer, having been a chain smoker most of his life. If I visited anyone else there pastorally as a curate in nearby Caerphilly, I don't remember, but meeting Uncle Douglas just that once, sparked my interest in mental health and sickness, which in a way contributed to my seeking a life in ordained ministry.

As I had the postcode and name of the road where the site entrance is located, it was easy to find, I arrived ten minutes early and there was no queue of cars. The entire procedure took two minutes. On my way out, I stopped and took photos of the site entrance and the screening station to post on Google Maps. My proposed annotation identifying location in the hospital grounds wasn't accepted by Google Maps, but the photos of the site entrance showed clearly enough that this is where a stranger would be able to know they'd come to the right place.

Just eleven hours later, I had a text message on my phone stating that the test was, as expected, negative also stating that I didn't need to self-isolate. The message was clearly not customised to account for the fact that the test subject in question has pre-op self isolation as a condition for surgery to proceed. This is what the pre-surgery information leaflet specifies and is what I shall do. Reading the paragraph about this in the leaflet made me realise that clauses in the prescriptive sentence are written in the wrong logical order, leading to ambiguity. Some pre-surgery recipients of the text message could conclude that because their test result is negative they need not self-isolate, on the assumption that the most recent text supercedes the leaflet advice. I'm not happy about this, but to whom can I report this instance of a risk laden mixed message?

I'm staying home and not going anywhere until Friday morning so daily exercise means pacing around the house and garden. Before last November's operation I lowered my daily target by 20% to 10,000 steps, and managed this, and a little more. I didn't bother changing it today, and easily met my 12700 step target with pauses to take phone calls, eat meals, and prepare my Thursday Morning Prayer reflection for recording tomorrow. I found confinement pacing much easier today than I did last time, a tribute to the improvement brought about by the previous round of surgery. I think I'm going to enjoy instead of endure the next couple of days of waiting.

Staycation round two, day four

Another dark day, more low cloud and rain, no going out into the garden. Unusually, I had a disturbed night with wound pain. I woke up feeling as if I'd been in a fight. Breakfast and indoor exercise got me going again, fortunately.

I had a lovely exchange of emails with Emma locums officer for the diocese in Europe this afternoon. It's nice to keep in touch. She's mostly working from home, but recently back one day a week in the Westminster office, though it seems it'll change again. The last time I heard from her she was on holiday with family and relatives in Brittany, concerned about the lack of masks and social distancing there out in the countryside. They just missed having to quarantine on return and are now in phase two restrictions where she lives in rural Essex. There's been an infection surge in her relatively low incidence region. It's tough when you've got young kids and they have to be kept home from school as a precaution.

Our conversation got me thinking about a report I haven't got around to writing for her colleague Laura on the complexities of obtaining a Spanish police check. It went out of my mind when I got back from Ibiza, so I set about doing it immediately. It can't be often that a locum in Spain has spent so much time there without obtaining a NIE identification number or a bank account, both are important if you attempt to apply unaided, as I tried to. I learned the hard way. It's best to get the local Chaplaincy safeguarding officer to arrange this in situ. In the end it saved me a lot more pain.

Just after five I had a phone call on my mobile from someone to arrange an appointment for a covid test on 7th Novemeber. I was starting to wonder if I should ring up about this, as there was no information about how to get this done in the hospital information pack, only stating it as a requirement. Given the strictness our quarantine demands, there could be no question of driving to a test centre. A mobile test team member will visit us instead. It seems that a number of them are re-deployed District Nurses. I wonder if it will be someone I know?

Clare surprised me again at supper tonight with a plate of lavabread and smoked mackeral. Yesterday she received a home delivery of fish from Ashton's fishmongers in the Central Market, a complete salmon filleted, plus the bones to make soup with (which we had for lunch today), and the lavabread which both of us love but only occasionally get around to buying.

I watched a couple more episodes of 'The Same Sky' this evening. The characterisation and sinister portrayal of the workings of the Stasi informers and their overlords is chilling.