Lateral flow tests still negative. I also ordered a postal PCR test yesterday after I found myself wondering if my expensive Dorset Cereals muesli always tasted like sawdust and I'd never noticed it, but I'm not actually expecting it to come back positive.

I didn't get up until about 4pm yesterday, after spending most of the day dozing. At about 10am the postman rang the doorbell with a parcel of fabric, which T brought upstairs and put next to me on the bed, where it lay until about 1pm when I finally managed to summon the energy to open it.

Today when T brought another parcel of fabric upstairs I opened it straight away, and was able to get up at lunchtime and sit on the sofa without a quilt over me. I am taking this as a sign that things are moving in the direction, though I have a tightness around the chest which I didn't have yesterday.

I'm not sure whether I should try to work from home tomorrow or take another day off. At the moment doing almost anything at all seems to leave me feeling wiped out, so maybe I should take another day even if that feels like indulgence rather than risk tiring myself out by trying to work?

Yesterday evening, T commented that I seemed to have been coughing a lot, and I realised that I did seem to have a slight tickly cough. Shortly after, I started feeling distinctly not-quite-well, though not really any particular kind of not-well. I'd done a lateral flow test a few hours earlier, which was negative, but I thought it would probably be better to think about working from home today rather than risking taking germs into the office where I have staff who are vulnerable, or who live with vulnerable people.

This morning I woke up still with a tickly cough and a tightness in my chest, and thought that as well as working from home I should probably book a PCR test. I toddled off to the local testing centre at 8am, got home and started working from home half an hour later, and by quarter to ten had decided that actually, I might be better off just going back to bed. Which I did, and stayed there until one o'clock when I got up, had some lunch and logged on to this afternoon's committee meeting.

I am still feeling off-colour but not terrible. No idea if this is mild breakthrough COVID (I can still smell and taste things, though I'm not sure they smell and taste quite the same as normal, but I may be imagining that) or one of the other bugs that are happily circulating now people are mixing with each other again; I'll be working from home tomorrow anyway, as I don't expect I'll get the PCR result in time to get into the office, and having encouraged my team to work remotely rather than bringing their germs to work I should probably do the same thing even though I much prefer being in the office.