tin.fish

 I knew, I knew that gerbils were the thin end of the wedge.  Once you allow animals into your home, the Overton Window of acceptable things begins to shift and before you know it you've got yourself a dog.  A Christmas dog - the worst kind of dog. Bunny Fish is a miniature dachshund and she's really bloody tiny.  She seems to have a radar that tells her whenever a human (and especially me) is accessible to be sat or laid on.  If I sit and enjoy a coffee on the floor, as I often do, this happens.  Then you feel obliged to just sit there until your buttocks and legs become clinically dead. I was fully in my "tight ship" mindset, preparing to ensure that Bunny would understand her place in this house and that she was a dog (Han's previous dog thought she was people) and should behave as such.  Then, the first time she cried I ran from my desk to her bed and thought "Ohhhh crap, she's got me". So here we go then, don't we.

On the 17th December, the family and I visited a friend in Copenhagen.  This was booked before omicron broke and was a non-refundable flight otherwise we'd probably have cancelled.  We did have a nice time, though the city and country were closing up around us.  By the 19th the Christmas markets were closed and restaurants and bars were emptying.  We left on the evening of the 20th and hunkered down at home for the Christmas period.  Turkey.   Pork-pie.  Prosecco.   You know the deal. On Christmas Eve I woke up with a slight sore throat and reported as much on the Kings College London Zoe app that I have been using pretty much since the beginning.  I also took a lateral flow test at the same time, which came back negative.  The sore throat was gone by lunch and I thought nothing else of it.  On Christmas Day I received an e-mail from KCL that said, although my symptom was not a Covid key symptom, they invited me to take a PCR test f...