The Omicron variant of Covid continues to rip through the land.
And Boris Johnson has only just stopped dithering about whether to go into any kind of Christmas lockdown (his conclusion? Damn the consequences, let’s not!).
One of his Brexit allies, Lord Frost, has just resigned at the very thought of it. What is it with these people? I know Boris said ‘never mind cancer outcomes’, but do they really not care about the vulnerable? Boris nearly died of Covid, for God’s sake!
People we know are now dropping like fluey-flies with Covid. The friend I (probably unwisely) went for a pint with a week ago…. Lizzie’s nephew and his girlfriend, whom Annie has just spent the weekend with… the boy I drive back from school, with my son, twice a week. They’ve all had it. It’s literally everywhere.
Christmas is getting closer. And Lizzie’s brother, P., arrives with his wife T. to drop off some presents – and pick up a painting of Lizzie’s they’ve bought.
I tell P. how everyone I know seems to be going under with Omicron Covid.
P. thinks about this for a moment. He then says ‘well, I guess that makes you a real super-’
-before he can finish, the thought pops into my head: he’s about to say ‘superhero’. Yeah, a real superhero! Because, despite all the crap which has been happening, and the fact Covid feels like it’s (infectiously) breathing down my family’s necks (as everyone we know gets it), I’m still kind of bearing up… still sort of supporting Lizzie… still just about hanging in there. A superhero. Well, why not! Maybe I deserve to be called that.
‘Super-spreader,’ finishes P.
‘Oh,’ I reply. ‘Not… a superhero then?’
P. looks at me and shakes his head. What the fuck are you talking about?
P. now starts to riff on his previous comment. Maybe the reason everyone I know appears to be getting Covid is because I’M the one giving it to them all! Like he said, I’m a super-spreader!
I begin riffing on this too. ‘You’re right! I’m the one common factor! It’s the only possible explanation!’
Soon, we’re riffing on the idea that Coronavirus didn’t actually start in China. It started here in the Midlands (it is the middle of the Earth, after all. Well, the middle of the UK. What better place to begin?).
And maybe I’M the starting point. The ORIGINAL super-spreader.
‘The government and scientists are closing in… it’s only a matter of time,’ whispers P. in his best conspiratorial tones.
I chuckle along gamely. Although, secretly, I’m pissed off he didn’t say I was a superhero.
P. D. Clifton 
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