Christmas is approaching. I am going to my son and family in Lancashire. It will be a proper Christmas with all the trimmings including a 10-year-old boy.

I don’t like Christmas and the more lights that go up and, the more I hear,

          ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.’ The more depressed I get. I absolutely refuse to be merry.

Yet, I am excited to go north, excited to be part of a family with a vibrant little boy, excited to be able to lie in bed and listen to the sounds of a household rather than the silence of my own home.

It is the height of the new Omicron variant of Covid 19. They say the symptoms are mild.

          ‘Mum, I will come and get you.’ My son says.

‘Don’t be so silly,’ I reply.

It is the 22^nd December and I am boarding the train north at Euston station. It is crowded. Everyone seems to have gone to the wrong end of the carriage for their seat number. There is a lot of people climbing over each other lifting heavy suitcases and apologising. The air is warm with the heat of exertion. My son has sent me some super protective masks.

On the 24^th of December, I suddenly can’t breathe and develop a cough. I end up in a small Accident and Emergency at a local hospital who help my breathing, give me tea and biscuits, and test me for Covid. I am negative but they advise that we should go to a testing centre to be tested again. Which we duly did.

It is Christmas Eve, a magical time for a child and as I cough and wheeze, the whole scene takes an enchanted dream like quality.

The Christmas tree looks larger than life, the many decorations, glisten, glitter and gyrate. The candlelight suffuses the room with dancing flames.

The small boy covers me in teddy bears to make me feel better, cuddly dinosaurs and tigers give me comfort. I am convinced that I do not have Covid.

My son and I sing raucous and tuneless Christmas carols which a small boy tries to join in but is soon defeated by our inability to keep time.

          I am enjoying Christmas.’ I think

My son comes to me in the early hours of Christmas day.

          ‘Mum, you have got Covid.’

It feels almost exciting. I have become part of history. I am a statistic.

We speak to other members of the family over Zoom. My new name is ‘Granny Omicron.

I am amazed by the care I receive. I am put into a virtual Covid ward and an oximeter is popped through the door for me to check my oxygen levels. Nurses in Lancashire phone me every day, plus nurses from my home practice monitor me.

Unfortunately, the path is not smooth. I spend two weeks coughing and breathless day and night a. My son holds my hand in the early hours and gives me comfort.

As I improve, I am determined to continue walking, even though I am still coughing and breathless, I walk up onto the moors, to the magic tree that stands in the wilderness. That tree is a survivor. I want to be that tree. My feeling is that Covid has damaged my lungs on top of the damage caused because I used to love smoking. If I keep using them, my old body will compensate.

This theory does not really work because three weeks ago on Saturday February 12th I cannot walk more than a few yards without gasping for breath and coughing. I become frightened and my eldest son and his wife come from Sussex to look after me. They both guard me through the night. My son helps me undress because I am incapacitated My daughter in law makes me hot lemon and honey and hugs me.

What I have discovered is how much my children care for me, I was born an unwanted child but I will die a cared for mother,

On the Monday, I am advised by my GP to return to Accident and Emergency. This will be my fifth visit!

I cried, I thought I would never walk again.

I was kept for two days in hospital.

Now, thanks to the steroids and inhaling vast amounts of Ventolin, I am walking. It feels a miracle. Maybe, my life will start agaim

I want to tell stories of my stay in hospital. Every experience gives stories.

My ward has five beds.

Opposite me is a voluble 83-year-old woman. She speaks but cannot hear, being almost stone deaf. At first, I communicate with her by writing things down then I realise that her eyesight isn’t too good either and discover I can shout into her right ear.

She has been isolated for two years due to Covid. She can use the Internet, but no-one has helped her to connect to it. She has never married and has no children. I imagine she was a civil servant. No wonder she talks so much. She craves company.

          ‘I am young,’ she shouts, and then adds quietly,

          ‘Inside.’

In the bed on my side of the ward is a comatose lady with dyed red hair and purple fingernails. I think she may have dementia, but in the evening, her daughter visits.

          ‘My Mum was running a clothes boutique in Purley last September. She has been running it for years. She loves clothes, she had a stroke and we thought we had found a good place to care for her, but hey did not feed her or give any drinks and here she is back in hospital.’

‘What has happened to humanity?’ I ask myself.

There are two African male nurses, one is super qualified, the other is a trainee. I can hear them talking. The senior nurse is encouraging the young one and teasing him. I hear that wonderful guttural laugh and it fills my soul.

The voluble lady opposite leaves for another ward and in her place comes a fragile young woman who complains through the night. In fact, she is not so young. She is 40 with type one diabetes. She has peripheral neuropathy and can hardly walk and can hardly see because of eye problems. Her boyfriend, a fit looking lean man covered in tattoos He helps her off the bed to take her out of the hospital because she finds the ward confining. I watch him gently put on her shoes. This is humanity.

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