My poor Judith, she achieved another first this week: she has had a Facebook post taken down by Facebook. Let me fill you in on the background. A few years ago we discovered, fell in love with, and are now passionate fans of a unique French band called “Franck Carducci and the Fantastic Squad” (http://www.franckcarducci.com/). A similar minded UK fan created a “Franck Carducci UK Fans” Facebook group” to enable us UK fans to easily keep in touch with the band and each other and on Monday a friend commented on a post in the group tagging Judith to say he owed her a pint. His plan was to meet in a pub near the venue for Francks gig this coming Friday at Wigan. Judith had replied along the lines of “Houston, we have a problem. Phil has tested positive for covid so we shall probably not be there and if he gives it to me I shall kill him”. Late Monday evening the administrator of the group messaged Judith with a screen shot of the message he had received from Facebook i.e. her post did not comply with their rules and so had been taken down. Oh dear, how heartbroken are we? Perhaps they did not like her quoting from a famous film?
Anyhow, I have not shared my bug with her and I am still alive- long may that be the case. However, testing positive for covid is likely to mean – as stated above – that we will probably not make Friday’s gig; it will depend upon test results on Friday, but it also caused a late problem for the band because they were due to stay at ours, but now they could not. If still positive on Friday, we have two further days to acquire that negative test as we are also due to see them at Bilston (Wolverhampton) on Sunday night. Plus, of course, there is the mere matter of a little footy match on Saturday evening between England and France. Covid aside, it’s probably a good job the band were due to stay with us Friday night rather than Saturday night because if the French win (likely, but not guaranteed) I might have deliberately burnt their breakfast – I didn’t when they stayed in March, but that was because there was no World Cup footy and Judith did the cooking (see photo).
When the pandemic first struck and the country went into lockdown, Judith got furloughed but I, being a PCSO for Greater Manchester Police (for any non UK readers, that stands for Police Community Support Officer, basically a uniformed member of police staff with virtually no powers – police officers we were not) and continued to go to work as if nothing had happened. Whilst there were some positives to this e.g. I was getting paid to walk the streets whilst many were confined to their homes, it also meant the opportunity to catch the virus was high, not only from the public but because both the police and the ambulance service worked from a community fire station. Woe forbid anyone who dared to cough in that building. The point of this ramble is that given that I was 65 one thought it was a case of when, not if, I caught the bug. But I didn’t. In December of 2020 I retired, right into another lockdown of course, this time one where I was also restricted, but again all tests remained negative. So fast forward to Thursday 24th November 2022 and my latest covid booster jab (I've lost count of how many needles I’ve had in my arm recently what with flu, pneumonia jabs and several blood tests – I want to be young again) followed by the wonderful weekend in Leicester I told you about last week; the one with the ram-packed pubs and shops. All day last Thursday I felt rather tired and felt rather weak at table tennis that evening. During the night a slight sore throat turned into a raging sore throat and by morning it was obvious I was going down with more man flu. Good job there was footy on the box as I wrapped myself up in blankets on the sofa and did not move for 48 hours. By Sunday I seemed to be over the worse of it, but then Sunday night the cough started. And wouldn't stop. Monday morning’s covid test confirmed the fear. After nearly 3 years avoiding the blighter, I had finally succumbed.
There is good news on the book front, the upload of the metadata files to Ingram Spark should be completed very soon; we are awaiting a confirmation email from our publisher. The timing is shit of course, because whilst we shall be able to buy author copies direct from Ingram, it is our understanding that it can take up to four weeks for the metadata to be completely uploaded (by Ingram) to Amazon, so guess what folks, we are having Christmas off and will begin promoting it in the new year. If we should change our minds, or some sort of miracle happens, I will let you know.
In the meantime, stay safe, be kind and if you are English, enjoy the game whatever the result.
Philip
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