Am I positive?
The Good Lady sniffed at me from the sofa, shifting from side to side like a corpse washed up in shallow water.
I looked at her COVID test and the two lines that were displayed on it and shook my head disgustedly.
Yep. You are positive. Congratulations, you manky filthy mare, you are officially hoaching with the plague.
I let the test drop with a little plastic clink to the tabletop and glowered at her.
Oh no. That means we can't go out for your birthday dinner, doesn't it?
She wrung her hands together as if anyone actually cared about me enjoying my half-century celebrations.
Aye. It means you are stuck in the house for 5 days until you test clean.
I sighed and looked intently at her.
Earlier in the week the Little Boom had tested positive for COVID. something he had celebrated with by shitting himself in his sleep as he lay half snuggled in my arms.
I had woken wondering why he seemed so sweaty and it wasn't until I got out of bed that I realised I hadn't really been on holiday and gotten a fine suntan but was instead covered in arse-water from my youngest child.
Salted caramel sauce will never quite hold the same appeal for me ever again.
Two days after that the Little Lady had tested positive.
She had exhibited her joy at being a filthy disease hound by moaning a lot and running to the toilet because her farts were wet.
I thought that COVID was a lung thing that made people feverish and cough a lot?
I had questioned my Doctor after waiting tenteen years in a phone queue to speak to him.
Well, that's the thing. This Omicron variant presents itself as more of a gastric issue, particularly in younger children!
My Doctor sounded particularly excited as if he had grown a pair of giant quacking breasts and someone was bringing them bread.
And the treatment is?
I knew there was no treatment but thought to ask. Perhaps he would recommend intravenous bleach or horse wormer? Then I remembered that I didn't live in fucking cuckoo land and that we used proper medicine here.
Just take it easy and perhaps don't let them stray too far from the toilet!
He chuckled, the chuckle of a man who has never woken up caked in another man's watery arse-gravy.
And now here we were. Two days after the Little Lady had fallen to the curse of the crows. The Good Lady was now smitten.
I weighed up my options.
Should I burn the house down with the family and all their COVIDS in it? Hmmm, tempting...
Or, should I charter a boat and sail the high seas until I eventually found a mysterious island where time had stood still and the Serpent King ruled with an iron fist until I and a random amusing monkey sidekick ended his vile reign and I was installed as King?
Or should I stay and as the last man standing forget about drunken birthday celebrations and crazy romantic dinners that could have been and just look after the bunch of ill bastards that my family had become?
The last man standing. It was like that movie, I Am Legend with Will Smith. Except I was paler than he was. Apart from arse-water night but the less said about that the better.
You are bound to get it next.. I don't see how you can escape it if we all have it now.
The Good Lady said with little consideration for men of iron such as myself.
I barked out a bitter laugh and gazed off to where the sun would set if such things were ever visible in cloudy Scotland.
It wont catch me lady-cakes.
I brushed past her and headed out of the room.
Epilogue.
Forty years later, King Boomy finally passed away. The people on the island that time had forgotten mourned his passing by decreeing that all their children would henceforth be named Boom.
The story of his great victory over the Serpent King was retold each year on the anniversary of the great battle which was now called Boomy's day. The natives re-enacted the battle right down to the broken whisky bottle he wielded and the shouts of 'C'mere ya prick!' that had echoed around the island as Boomy savaged the reptilian scum in the name of FREEDOM.
They say he passed happily. His many wives and children recounted his last words were simply -
I think I made the right choice.