Battling covid

Jenny and I have both had covid for around ten days now. It's my second dose and it's a lot worse than my first dose, which just seemed like a slight cold.

Both Jenny and I are feeling totally exhausted and in the grip of brain fog. It's all we can do to drag ourselves through the daily chores. I have to stop in the middle of washing up to regain some energy. Just a 30 minute walk round the neighbourhood is absurdly draining. I did manage to get to the MOT (car inspection) centre on Friday to get the car passed as roadworthy.

All I can say is, I hope I can shake this thing off before too long. It's no fun staggering through the day in a mental haze. But it can take anything up to 12 weeks for a full recovery, which is a depressing thought.

Of course I wonder if I might be getting long covid, which affects at least two million people in the UK and can be sufficiently debilitating to prevent many people from working. Luckily I'm retired so I don't need to worry about that.

The risk of getting long covid has dropped to about 3.5 per cent among vaccinated people (which includes me), but that's still a significant number of people.

Watch this space....

Nosey parkers

As a non-parent, I'm grateful I've escaped all those unwanted criticisms that parents are confronted with. As if it isn't hard enough dealing with an unruly, angry child, unhelpful comments from others just add insult to injury.

In an American poll*, nearly two thirds of mothers said they felt they had been criticised for their parenting decisions, from their own family as much as from total strangers.

Discipline, sleep and diet were the topics that usually brought criticism, but anything was grist to the mill. I guess those who are long-time parents often feel entitled to criticise the supposed failings of new parents.

I don't criticise other people's behaviour, unless they're behaving especially badly. I don't even criticise people's table manners, something that gets a lot of people stewing.

And as a non-parent who has little idea of what parenting involves (apart from watching my own parents), and certainly not the day-after-day stress of living with volatile, self-centred, truculent youngsters, I wouldn't dare challenge a parent on his or her parenting skills.

So much of the criticism is a matter of opinion anyway. "Your children are being too noisy". "You should give him a good smack". "You're being too indulgent". "She's manipulating you". Mind your own business and shut the f--- up.

Looking back on my own childhood, I can see now that I must have been an absolute pain in the neck at times. I disagreed with my father on most things and I could be stubborn as a mule. Luckily he was a middle-class father who would think twice about clobbering me, however maddening I was being.

I have every sympathy for hard-pressed parents. However much you love your kids, there are times when they're simply utterly exhausting.

*A poll of 475 mothers of children under five by the C.S.Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Drained and skint

Another mother has taken the bold step of declaring that bringing up children is hard work and she can't wait for her youngest child to be an independ-ent adult.

"Raising a child is 1% happiness and 99% worry. Raising children not only left me exhausted but it left me bankrupt" says French author Corinne Maier. But she feels obliged to say she loves being a parent, even if it isn't true. "It's time to stop marketing the babies-mean-happiness idea,"

She thinks improving this rotten world "with its exhausted assets and polluted natural resources" is a higher priority than raising children. As child-rearing takes so much energy, it's hard to do both.

Naturally other mothers will disagree. If there are fewer children, who will look after the elderly or keep the economy going, or for that matter who will fight to improve the rotten world?

But certainly while there's no shortage of would-be parents to maintain the population, there's a drastic shortage of would-be environmental campaigners to tackle the worrying state of the planet. If things go on as they are, there'll no longer be a functional world for our children to inherit. So maybe Corinne has a valid point.

I do think many parents rush into child-rearing without properly considering if they're up to the job. The number of children one way or another psychologically damaged by inadequate parents is alarming. But every parent thinks they'll get on just fine, or at any rate they'll muddle through and their kids won't come to any serious harm. If only that were true.

As you know I have no children. For all sorts of reasons, but mainly because having children meant nothing to me. I agree with Corinne - saving the planet is a hundred times more important.

Pic: is not Corinne Maier!