Stiff Upper Lip

I open my eyes, I can hear the pitter patter of rain on the window. My eldest daughter climbs in to my bed and snuggles in. I can see a dull daylight trying to break through the gaps in the blinds but it is still dark in our bedroom. We lay there for a while until she starts kicking the bed in a slow and steady rhythm, like a drum. Then she moves to stick her face on my husbands sleeping face, in an effort to wake him up I think. “Come on.” I whisper “Let’s go snuggle downstairs and leave them to sleep.”

We pad downstairs and make a posh coffee (me) and cereal with milk (her). We snuggle up on the sofa and watch a David Attenborough, I am instantly drawn in by the stunning visuals and transported back to Africa. I sip my hot coffee and it brings instant relief to my throat. Since yesterday I have had some kind of frog or golf ball lodged there.

[When I was twenty I took a couple of months off work to go and volunteer at a school for children with special needs, in Tanzania. It is one of the most profound experiences of my life (which includes developing an understanding of ’volountourism’ in Africa) and sets off a butterfly effect in the way my life evolves. I became very close with a handful of people I shared accommodation with, we volunteer together and go on a weekend safari to the Serengeti, one of them eventually ends up introducing me to my now husband. I think about waking up in my bed there, covered by a mosquito net, hot African sun streaming through the windows, the sound of cockerels waking up for the day and the smell of wood smoke wisping through the air. One morning I wake up feeling violently ill, I can barely lift my head off the table at breakfast time and my friends take photos of me, blaming it on the morning after the night before. I am indignant but my protests meet deaf ears; it is a classic case of the boy who cried wolf, dear reader. After three days of me being unable to leave either the toilet or my bed and half a stone lighter, they start to take me seriously. I am driven to a local clinic in the back of a truck and tested for Malaria, it comes back negative. There are very, very poorly people in the clinic and I feel like a fraud. But when I get back to the house I still cannot bring myself to eat anything, my stomach turns when other volunteers start relaying verbal fantasies about eating Chinese food. I am in my bed and ask someone to pass me my phone, I think I need to ring my Mum (a nurse) I say. Stiff upper lip. I try to downplay it “Don’t worry, it’s not malaria” I say, but I can hear she is very worried. I hang up the phone and my stiff upper lip turns in to a childlike wobbly bottom lip. I burst in to tears. One of my dear friends, who is now a friend for life, takes my hands and says incredibly important words of comfort and advice that stick with me to this day: “Oh mate. I hate to see you cry. You must feel really poorly. But what I’m about to say is really important. You need to man the fuck up.” I do man up - I glug an American volunteers Pepto Bismol, pink gloopy chalky stuff, that allows me to keep food down for the first time in almost a week. After a while I return to volunteering and then eventually back to England and work, although something is still not right and after a few weeks (and following a highly embarrassing delivery to my local surgery of some see-through sample tubes) I am diagnosed with Amoebic Dystentary. I run up to that doctor at a local festival five years later and drunkenly congratulate him on his diagnosis. I wonder if it is either one of the high or low points of his career]

I stick my phone down my throat and take a photo of my tonsils. They are angry and red but they are not showing signs of tonsillitis, so I make a salt water and TCP potion and gargle for a little while. I do not want to have, nor do I need, medical intervention at the moment. I see a post on the community page where someone has a child with severe burns and can’t get through to talk to either the emergency or non-emergency numbers as they are overwhelmed with calls about this illness. How frightening, I think. Smaller issues and injuries (non life-threatening) have the potential to become bigger at the moment, if left untreated. But equally, people will become more adept at treating more minor concerns at home. I reason as I gargle. Avoid doctors. Do all the things (I have had tonsilitis twice  in the past year or so, so I now have a list of things I can do to nuke it at the first sniff). I gargle, I drink constantly, hot honey and lemon (no wine, sadly), I take Ibuprofen to reduce the inflammation and I catch up on sleep and rest. If I get desperate I have some absolutely rank throat sprays I can deploy. But it’s not at that level. It’s just a sore throat.

I message my sister the picture of my throat. “I can’t really see from the photo. Hope it’s not this lurgey. Cut out booze.” She messages. “Helpful message“ I reply. “Thanks.” I send her the emoji so she knows I am giving her the look. I message my best friend who sends a slightly more sympathetic message shortly followed by “I’ve got an amazing Tiger King Tik Tok planned for tomorrow.”

I am on Annual Leave, although we are now not going away we decide it will still be nice to have a precious week at home as a family. Time together. Whilst all around us the world is in crisis we are safe in our homes, still. We are incredibly lucky and we are aware of our privilege. I think back to this time last year when we went away for our Easter break and I was taking Penicillin for Tonsillitis, exhausted and run down. Although I have been working from home, feeling very lucky to be able to do so, my body is telling me that I still need to take a break. Read the signs, it croaks from my throat.

I keep drinking hot drinks and read the news while we watch a drama unfolding on the African planes, my news app tells me that a tiger has been diagnosed with the illness at a zoo in America. What does this mean, I think. I think of all the corrupt big cat breeders in the U.S; the article says that the big cat caught it from an asymptomatic member of staff and my brain is flooded with thoughts. It is thought that the virus started as a result of a human eating an infected animal and now the humans have gifted it back to animals in captivity. I wonder about the worlds natural rhythm and how we, as humans, have been disturbing it for generations. I read on: “The pandemic has been driven by human-to-human transmission, but the infection of the tiger raises new questions about human-to-animal transmission.”

My daughter stands in front of the TV and watches as a group of Cheetahs try to chase and catch a Gazelle, dropping out of the running one by one until there is just one Cheetah left in the race. “Come on!” she yells at it in desperation “You have to keep going, you are the only one left!” The Cheetah sinks it’s claws in to the Gazelles hind and brings it down, the footage is set to dramatic music and has been slowed right down for full effect “Woah.” My daughter says slowly, wide eyed.

I feel like my previously luxurious latte is sticking to the lump in my throat and I can’t tell whether my Ibuprofen is wearing off or whether the novelty of being human is.

“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realise we cannot eat money.” - Indian Proverb