For the first time since I was very young, I have learned how to have a lie-in. Where previously I would wake up and immediately start fretting about the need to get up and do pretty well nothing, I can now lie there under the quilt and imagine myself as a defendant in a highly embarrassing court case, as I did this morning. I daren’t go into details, although the whole thing is clearly a misunderstanding and I am innocent of whatever charges have been laid. But, like this morning, I get up and I am every bit as tired as when I went to bed last night. I have come to a variety of possible conclusions:
- Cancer. Being very tired can be a symptom of all manner of cancers. Barely a week goes by without me thinking I may have some form of cancer or other.
- COVID-19. Being very tired can be a symptom of COVID-19, although I have had something like seven tests in the last week, all negative.
- A virus. 10 days on from contracting my latest cold/cough/whatever it is virus, I am still coughing like a 50 Woodbine smoker (ask your parents, kids, although if they smoked Woodbines they probably aren’t around to ask).
- An unhealthy Christmas diet.
- All of the above.
No. I should be full of the joys is spring, or even the warmest winter in the history of the world, ever. But I have less energy than our cat – far less, in fact – and if this carries on, I may have to eat some fruit or do something healthy. What to do next?
That great cure all on the internet, of course: Facebook. Not only can I learn from amateur virologists that Covid-19 is nothing more than a cold/doesn’t exist at all/was invented by lizards or something, I find that “there are lots of nasty bugs DOING THE ROUNDS at the moment”. So, that’s it, officially. It may not be cancer or COVID-19. Just a bug that’s DOING THE ROUNDS, knocking on doors, sneaking up behind you in the pub, trying to make you feel shit.
My lie-in for today is over now and I’m hoping to last long enough in my man cave before heading back for another afternoon snooze.
The so far unspoken alternative explanation is that feeling knackered is what happens to old people and soon I’ll be doing little else than dipping biscuits into my tea in between sleeping. Anyway, enough self-pity from me. I’m off for a nap.
