^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 16 July 2021].}

The past two days have mostly been a write-off.

Apart from an official call, some personal calls, a chat with a good friend on FB Messenger and a couple of minor tasks yesterday, I spent most of the day sleeping or trying to sleep. I managed to eat and keep my fluids up, but not much else.

Wednesday and Thursday brought a day and a half of coughing, headaches and mild temperatures. In the wee hours of this morning, I must have had a fever, as I woke up with my t-shirt drenched and clinging to me. So today, I went to the nearest walk-through Covid-19 testing site for my first ever PCR test.

I still feel it's more likely just a head cold knocking me for six after not being ill since early in 2019. But there were enough potential signs from both the early variants and the Delta variant for me to err on the side of caution and do the right thing by my fellow citizens.

Thankfully, by this morning, I felt more confident in my ability to complete a 90-minute round-trip on foot to the testing centre. Unfortunately, I was still too out of it to think about putting on SPF50 for the journey.

If I had thought of it, I possibly also would have worried about sunscreen contaminating the test. But, at least, I would have slathered the sunscreen on my arms and taken it with me to apply to my face for the return journey.

Alas, no good deed goes unpunished. So, to add to my poor health, I now have a fierce sunburn on my forehead, nose, upper arms and around the front of my neck. Suffice to say, the sunburn didn't improve my headache any.

On the positive side (thank goodness there is almost always a positive side!): I took a detour on the way back through Tottenham Cemetery, including a wander around the lake there, a few glimpses of the River Moselle, and communed with the Canadian geese, pigeons, squirrels, and some other birds I didn't recognise.

I'm feeling vaguely more human now. Enough to do some small pieces, like edit the above image to share with you. But I'll likely call it a night again soon and hope my test results come back negative tomorrow and that this was all just a nasty head cold.

Either way - and at the risk of cursing myself - I seem to have passed the worst of it now.

For those who'd like to know: I spotted these fellows at the base of a tree in The Royal Oak's car park in Ashbourne as I was departing the hotel after a hearty breakfast with my parents in June 2017.

I hope you're keeping well xx