A long Covid, or Over the Wall — Thursday 2nd July 2020
By: Who Is Andrew Beattie
Tags: Diary, Journaling, Coronavirus Diaries, Covid Diaries, Covid Journal

I was clearly in the mood to write a year ago. I’ve just done something I don’t usually do and read forward in the diary and I’d written a lot in a short space of time. I think I was excited and frightened at the changes ahead — the end of the first lockdown.

I think I’ve been excited and frightened a lot of the time since then.

But, like then, it feels as if there is a big change ahead. I was talking to Anna about it recently, about how it feels like we’re heading into a new phase of the pandemic. The various lockdowns until now seem like a first phase, and what’s ahead feels like the ‘living with the virus’ phase. Here in the UK anyway.

I haven’t described that too well. But I’m more excited than I am frightened of what’s ahead.

It’s just gone 8 pm here and I’m on the couch with a podcast playing on my phone. My weekly shopping arrives in the next hour and once it has I’ll settle down to finish a book I’ve been reading recently called Before the Coffee Gets Cold. It’s about a cafe in Tokyo where you can time travel but have to return to the present by drinking a cup of coffee before it gets cold. It’s lovely.

And so let me transport you back to a year ago and the things on my mind then.

Remember to drink the coffee before it gets cold.

The view from the hill on the Rezzy. You can see Welsh hills and two football stadiums from up there.

Thursday 2nd July 2020

10 minutes to nine at night and Liverpool, the champions of England, are currently 2–0 down against Manchester City, the former champions of England. I came back downstairs from a chat with Anna, who has finished work early for the weekend, having missed the first goal. I should probably have stayed upstairs.

I’m sat in my second favourite chair in the house, the swivelly rocking one my Auntie dropped off a couple of weeks back, and Max, face lit up by iPad, and Amy, face looking on at the TV in dismay, are sat on the couch. Outside, the Ice Cream Van is making his nightly stop outside our house. I’ve lived in this house for over three years and I’m surprised nobody has told the driver of the Ice Cream Van to fuck off and not play his loud music at 9 pm every night. I wouldn’t do that, of course.

Over the weekend I ordered 24 cans of a special Jurgen Klopp edition Erdinger beer. Each can has Klopp’s face on it and as they were released to celebrate Liverpool being the champions of England, I couldn’t resist buying them — 6 cans each for me, David, my Dad and David's best friend, Jackson. I’ve opened one of my six and am about halfway through it. A good beer. A championship-winning beer.

Manchester City have just scored their third goal of the half and I’m wondering if the Liverpool players might have sampled one or two of these in the past week. Who could blame them?

+

It’s half-time now, and I’ve just had another swig of my beer. Three more swigs like that and I may be on the way to the fridge for another. It’s Thursday evening, almost the weekend, the champions of England are playing and Anna has finished work for the weekend, and so two beers tonight feels justified. Especially ones in a red can with Jurgen Klopp’s face on.

I booked off a long weekend for myself at the end of July today during which I’m planning on having a day out with my Mum and Max, playing on my Playstation for the first time in a few months, and getting my head around the idea that I’ll probably be moving house in August.

+

The second-half is almost upon us and so it’s time to watch the champions play for 45-minutes.

Up the reds.

This is part of a series of diary entries I wrote from April 2020 to April 2021. I’m posting them a year out from when I first wrote them. You can read the other ones I’ve posted here