Hotel Quarantine: Days -1 to 2. Day -1: What to pack
By: Rosie Goddard
Tags: Hotel Quarantine, Radisson Blu, Quarantine, Corona, London

Day -1: What to pack

Here is a list of extra-curricular items I have packed for hotel quarantine because I have convinced myself I am going to jail.

1kg of raw broccoli and spinach because I read a Daily Mail article where people in hotel quarantine got served frozen chicken sandwiches. I start to imagine the rest of the menu consisting of potatoes on pies on Yorkshire puddings and decide that it’s best to take no chances.

Some collagen for extra protein (refer to point about Yorkshire puddings). I express concern on the way to the airport that said collagen will look like a big bag of drugs at security. My mum tells me to grow up.

Some coffee and a cafetière because I am choosing not to drink and thus coffee and cigarettes will be my only vices.

Embroidery because I am 87.

We arrive at Cape Town Airport and for the first time in 5 years, I am not sobbing as I say goodbye to my parents. Either I am broken or I am saving all my tears for quarantine. There’s no way of knowing until 10am tomorrow morning.

While waiting for my flight to board, I survey the other passengers, wondering if any of them are heading to hotel quarantine in London (I am flying via Frankfurt), and if so, which of them I will recruit to be my corridor-hopping friends, just like I read about on the BBC.

Before you tell me that this is illegal and possibly a bad idea, I will save you time, because there was no potential and thus none of them made the cut.

Day 0: Did I make a mistake?

After I make it through customs with 1kg of raw vegetables burning a hole in my bag, I am escorted onto a bus with some other South Africans, and we begin our tour of the local hotels, dropping people one by one. Some people are trying to make friends — they must have read the same article as me — but I am staring into the grey skies clutching my bag to my chest and wondering if I have made a grave mistake.

While I have done some research into the hotel I was allocated (a Radisson Blu) and thought it appeared pretty nice considering, my hopes start to dwindle as we make our way from one haunted Holiday Inn to the next. I am shivering and shaking as we drive up to the final hotel — my hotel — but looking around, I am pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t look haunted, and it is not set on a building site. We are taken through a somewhat grandiose-meets-conference-chic lobby to a waiting room and asked to choose all of our meals for the next 10 days. The menu has a lot of surprisingly good and healthy options and for a brief second, I wonder if all those vegetables in my bag were necessary.

The concierge tells me we are allowed to go outside as much as we want in half-an-hour time slots, we just need to ring down for a guard. He then takes me to my room which is also… not that bad, barring the view that looks straight onto another building. At this point, you have to understand that my expectations were so low, anything that wasn’t completely rubbish filled me with a childlike joy.

The room is stocked up with water, coffee and tea, lots of extra towels and bedding, a fridge and kettle, hair dryer, and TV, and the bed is comfy. After I’ve unpacked the essentials, lunch arrives — grilled salmon on a bed of long stem broccoli, rocket salad on the side — and is accompanied by a big bottle of San Pellegrino which fills me with more joy. Dinner is equally as good and arrives with another bottle. I don’t know what I did to deserve this extra touch (and I pray that I won’t be hit with a £200 bill for water), but for now, I like it here.

Day 1: Eating everything + spying on the neighbours

I wake up to my first full day of quarantine at 7am, ready to mainline some coffee and hear the food trolley clinking its way down the corridor. I hear my neighbour chatting to the concierge as he receives his food and I decide he has a hot voice, so I try to get a look through the peephole but am unable to get a clear visual. Then it is my turn to receive food and as I delve into the brown paper bag, I discover my first self-control hurdle. Sitting before me is a fluffy, fresh and delightfully warm croissant, creamy oats, a cereal bar, a yogurt, two pieces of fruit, juice and another big sparkling water. I panic at the thought of so much food and relatively little exercise, and then I panic eat the croissant, followed by yogurt and the oats.

I spend the morning working, exercising and chatting to wonderful friends calling to find out how I am but also to enquire about the food and if I can please take a photo of one of the guards. In the quiet moments, I survey the room and wonder what sides of me it will see — will I lose all sense of self and film a TikTok dancing video? Will I leave the most hydrated person in London? How many tears will I shed? This last question is swiftly answered after I turn on the TV and am greeted with the first channel option: Movies4Men.

Day 2: Raw fish + going outside

I’ve been putting off going outside with an accompanying guard in much the same way that I put off going to the hairdresser — because I don’t like making small talk. I eventually muster up the energy to call reception and within 2 minutes there is a knock at the door.

The guard, who thankfully has the same approach to small talk as I do, takes me outside to the parking lot where people are running and walking in circles, smoking, staring into space, and shooting the breeze. You could liken the set-up to a prison scene of sorts, if prison was filled with K-Way-puffer-jacket-wearing mothers shipped in from the South African suburbs. I scan the horizon for potential pals but am left disappointed.

I head upstairs and am busy voice-noting a friend about how the food is not actually that bad when the buzzer goes — lunch is served. This time around, lunch is raw fish on a bed of beans, and not raw in a cute sashimi way either, although they have brought me another bottle of San Pell, which takes the total received to 7.

Today is Covid test day. This gets dropped off at my door and once that’s wrapped up, I go downstairs for another few laps of the parking lot. I then treat myself to a cigarette because it is Friday.

My friends Katie and Jacques call in the evening and I slot into their cosy post-dinner conversation as if I am on the sofa with them. I laugh along as they tease each other, basking in the happy haze of their relationship before we eventually say goodnight and I fall asleep content.