The preparations for the great Return To School have begun.
Oliver has had his test for bat-flu.
We did this ourselves at home, obviously. This is entirely within the established Ibbetson family tradition of preferring not to go within a hundred miles of any kind of medical facility. In the past this has worked perfectly well, even for excitements like chainsaw accidents and childbirth. On the whole it is easier to manage by ourselves, quietly at home. Give a chap a scalpel of his own and he will not be able to resist the opportunity to use it, certainly once he has got bored with listening to bits of himself with his new stethoscope.
Anyway, it turned out that there was an option of not going to a Government Authorised Test Centre, but getting the Government to send you a test to do by yourself at home, so I wrote to them, and they sent me one.
In fact they have sent me two, because they sent me one when he was going to go back to school after Christmas. I am going to do the other one in a day or so as well, because I do not think that there is the smallest chance that he has got bat flu, unless it really has crept down the 5G and into his bedroom. I do, however, think that there is a considerably larger chance that he might get a false positive, and so I am going to do the test again, just to give him a reasonable chance of passing.
I am not looking forward to explaining that to him. He did not at all like doing it once.
It turns out to be an entirely barbaric procedure.
There is a small paperback book of instructions, starting with the direction to go and wash your hands. I did not bother about this bit, but it turned out not to matter, because once I had unwrapped the box and dumped everything on the desk it told me to go and wash them again, for at least twenty seconds.
I got bored after fifteen, and dried them. It did not mention whether or not you were allowed to dry them, presumably you have got to because of not getting the testing kit wet.
It was not the towel that I had just used to dry the dog, so probably that was all right.
It told me that I should wipe the desk with an antiseptic wipe first. I didn’t do that either, but consoled myself with the recollection that it had a good squirt of Mr. Sheen when I cleaned a few days ago, and so was probably all right as well.
It told me to wash my hands again, which I didn’t.
It then showed me a picture of an enlarged cotton bud, which the children used to call Ear Bogs when they were small, I do not know why.
I had to shove the cotton bud down Oliver’s throat and then up his nose, being careful not to get that in the wrong order.
I summoned Oliver, who was still in bed. It seemed that it would be the sort of operation best performed on a semi-conscious patient.
I suggested that he performed it on himself, but he declined, especially because he would have needed to go and faff about washing his hands, and said that he would prefer just to trust me.
I poked the cotton bud down his throat.
You are not supposed to let it touch their tongue. Short of holding his tongue out with the pliers I do not know how I could have stopped this, because he gagged and swore and wagged about a great deal.
I told him that he could jolly well stuff it up his own nose if he was going to make that sort of fuss, and showed him on the stick how far up it had to go.
He was most disinclined to shove it far enough, being of the opinion that it was practically poking his eyeballs out as it was, and so in the end I gave up and released him, warning him that we needed to have captured enough DNA to give a proper result, and that if we had not, it would not work.
I do not understand this bit. If you are a murderer it sounds as though all you have got to do is look at some carpet fluff or a strand of hair or a fearsomely sharp butcher’s knife, and your DNA leaps off you and splatters all over it. On the television all people have got to do is breathe too hard and they scatter strands of their DNA all over the crime scene like a packet of crisps given to a grumpy toddler.
If this is the case I do not see why the Government cannot get DNA from you without needing to puncture your eyeballs with their horrid sterile swab.
Oliver returned the now presumably snot-and-dribble laden cotton bud, and sloped off, leaving me to wrap it up as a present for the Government.
I can’t think of many other things I would prefer to give to Boris at this present moment, I hope he opens it himself.
I recorded the bar codes, as the instructions said, resisted the temptation to put something pointless-but-funny in the package, like a cork with a smiling face painted on it, or a small plastic dragon. Instead I sealed the box and went over to the post office.
It is unexpectedly embarrassing to be carrying a bat-flu-test package along a public road. You instantly feel as though the world is watching you and suspecting you of vile diseases.
I shoved it in the post box as quickly as I could.
It had jolly well better be negative. On the whole I think probably it might be considered a practice run. We might try again tomorrow.
The picture is a very happy thing. It is some of the ferns which are growing out of my mossy archways. I wanted to show you that they have started to grow lots of little baby ferns, coiled tight and ready to uncurl in the sun.
I am feeling very pleased indeed.
