Have you had Covid? That’s the big question. Well, fairly big. Because I haven’t. And, by all rights, I should have had it by now. 170,000 people a day can’t all be wrong. Yet for me and for Mel, we remain excluded from this ever-growing club of victims. I’ve been traveling on the tube every day since the first lockdown stopped. I’m face-to-face with umpteen people every day. I used to use hand sanitiser but now feel about that what Djokovic feels about vaccinations. I wear a mask, but that, allegedly, is to protect others from my germs. Of which, in my case, there are many. I’ve had colds, I’ve had a cough, Mel’s had a cough for 3 months, yet every day (whilst waiting for our ‘day 2’ test result, here on ‘day 7’) we test ourselves and we’re negative. It’s almost a disappointment. So we attribute this to ‘some vague kind’a genetic factor’. Possibly genetic immunity? And praised our fathers for their endowment to us. Yet both fathers, 95 and 97, have had it. And survived it with very few issues. So we rescind those thanks and look for somewhere else to place them.

We had this conversation the other day with Mel’s brother. He’s a surgeon, but like most doctors, spent half of 2020 treating Covid patients. Yet never had it himself. And thus we were patting ourselves on our metaphorical backs in praise of good fortune and stern constitutions.

The brother-in-law tested positive this morning. But I think he got it because he’s not a Spurs fan. Because God only has time to look after a certain number of people every day so obviously concentrates on us first. There are spiritual reasons to account for my team’s lack of winning anything ever, but they’re too complicated in a theological sense to try and explain to you now.

There’s a whole hoo-haa about Covid hotels, particularly in Australia, to coincide with the Djokovic fiasco currently ruling our every moment. How shitty the food, how the windows don’t open, no access to a gym, no access to fresh air, FFS, no porn channels, simply terrible. And a terrible leap by association of the press (quel surprise?) because Novak isn’t in a Covid hotel. He doesn’t have Covid. Like me, and several other world class tennis players. Novak is in an internment hotel for unwanted immigrants. For visa failures before inevitable deportation. And although I’m sure the food is not up to Roux Brothers standard, it might be better than at the Covid places. No-one knows. Only Novak. And his mum.

One day, probably quite soon, they’ll have special hotels for conspiracy theorist tossers and antivaxxers who want to enter tennis tournaments but can’t. Until then, Novak will just have to slum it with the boat people from Vietnam, the Fijian stow-aways and the crowd from the odd dinghy which left Calais in search of Folkestone in 2014 and got lost. Really lost.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx