As soon as she bought it she started to think about moving back to Essex. Then over New Year she caught a nasty flu, which confirmed the idea. As soon as she got the new job we started to hear about a novel coronavirus emerging from China.
By the time Mother’s Day arrived the world was in such a panic that cafés had closed but the farm shop was doing takeaway. This would be our last opportunity to use it, as she was due to move home in a few weeks time. I was so concerned with persuading her to move back straight away that I left the vouchers at home and had to pay for the ordered takeaways. We sat on the floor of her flat (her table was full of work from home screens) and ate, while random people arrived to buy her furniture and we stuffed things into bin bags and shoved them in my sister’s car. The Long Suffering Husband came with me the next day to help collect more stuff and as we drove home Boris made his lockdown announcement.
The voucher stayed pinned to the board until my daughter moved and I gave it to her to use, the next time she visited friends.
This weekend we were due to go to Birmingham with friends for the Christmas market. It has been a long and stressful couple of weeks, so I was looking forward to relaxing and starting to get into the Christmas spirit. We had planned to stop on the way for some lunch and the LSH suggested Market Harborough.
“Ooh, there’s still the afternoon tea voucher,” I said
It was still in my daughter’s kitchen drawer.
Last week was particularly stressful. It was the week of the school nativity, meaning that I had to be in school everyday and also a week where I had eight pupils taking exams. My daughter was away on Monday night and so we walked to hers in the morning to feed the cats before an afternoon in a hall of coughing children. When she came home on Tuesday evening, she discovered that we had left a tap on and flooded her house. Soggy moggies, lifting laminate and cupboards full of soaked rice and pasta weren’t the only things we found during the clean up. The afternoon tea voucher was floating in a drawer.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to use this,” she said, putting it on the radiator with the cats vaccination records.
The cats and and the voucher dried out and the LSH booked the afternoon tea and put the voucher in the car glove box, so we didn’t forget it.
I was taking a lateral flow test almost every day because twice a week didn’t feel enough with the number of cases in school. The last thing I wanted was to be a super-spreader. Thursday was the morning of the exams, the afternoon of the last nativity performance and I had a scratchy throat. By the evening I felt understandably tired. I had a meal booked out with friends and so took a lateral flow test before I went out.
“Phew, it’s negative. I was really worried,” I told the LSH.
Then on Friday morning I started to sneeze, my nose was runny and I was freezing.
“Do you think I should pop down for another PCR test?” I asked the LSH, just to be sure.
“We will be on our way to Birmingham by the time you get the results,” he said, “The lateral flow was negative, it’s just a cold.”
However, my usual Friday night lateral flow came back positive. PCR confirmed. Weekend cancelled. No chance to use the cursed vouchers.
I wonder if I could end the pandemic by ceremoniously burning the voucher?
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