ISOLATION DIARY

Arbuthnot

Splendid Isolation Diary

After testing positive for coronavirus, Torquil Arbuthnot was advised by his physician to remain indoors for a week. This is his journal for those seven days.

“The Pope suggests that, when I’m feeling better, I should pop over to Rome sometime for an asado, as he makes a mean salsa criolla. He has had a billiards table installed in the Castel Gandolfo, so we can chat over the baize”

Sunday

I am obliged to take some sort of medicoscientifical test before venturing out, to ensure that I don’t contaminate the general populace. I stick what resembles a swizzle stick up my nose and ask my man Youssef to do the necessary with the chemicals. He informs I have tested “positive” and must self-isolate for several days. I admit I had been feeling rather seedy, but mistook the symptoms for my usual panoply of ailments: gout, Green Monkey

Fever, Bechuana Tummy, Korsakoff psychosis, etc. I immediately get on the blower to my man in Harley Street, Dr McTavish. He assures me I had received the toppest quality vaccine available (“aged in sherry casks”, he says) but mutters that, “The wee blighters sometimes get through the best defences.” He confirms I must live a hermit’s life for a week, and advises me to dose myself with whatever panegyrics I see fit.

As I cannot get to evensong, the vicar relays his sermon to me from the top of the church tower via semaphore.

Monday

As I will have to take all my meals in my bedchamber, a little man comes up from the village to re-route the dumb waiter. I dose myself with tincture of laudanum after breakfast. Youssef is instructed to cancel all my engagements and that I will be conducting them by telephone for the foreseeable. I pass the morning cataloguing my collection of Cherokee war-bonnets. In the afternoon, after a soothing nap, I work on my operetta about the editor of The Chap, provisionally entitled Gustav Temple: Genius or Madman?

Buckingham Palace telephone, asking my advice on how to handle the kerfuffle around Prince Andrew. I suggest “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” would be best, and that he be made permanent Governor-in-residence of the Falkland Islands and be sent there forthwith on a slow boat, possibly an unseaworthy one. “Too kind,” I murmur when promised “a little bauble” in the next Honours list.

Tuesday

Feeling slightly feverish, I fall back on remedies tried and tested in the Amazonian rainforest and the Hindu Kush, namely mustard poultices and hot quinine toddies. The hours pass slowly, so the local amateur dramatics society kindly entertains me with

a production of No, No, Nanette under my window.

The Pope (an old chum from our seminary days in Buenos Aires) telephones, as he is having “doubts” about the Athanasian Creed. We talk things over and I think I put his mind at rest. He suggests that, when I’m feeling better, I should pop over to Rome sometime for an asado, as he makes a mean salsa criolla. He has had a billiards table installed in the Castel Gandolfo, so we can chat over the baize.

Wednesday

I undertake some brisk exercise by doing the Daily Telegraph crossword for twenty minutes, before settling down to pen another chapter of my travel book, Meanderings in Mesopotamia. Later I play chess against one of my automata.

As my valet cannot be admitted to my chambers I am forced to dress myself for dinner, and get in a complete muddle with my collar studs. One rolls behind the dressing-table and it takes several casts with my fly rod to retrieve it. I then practise casting from the window, but cannot reach the ornamental fountain and keep snagging the line on the topiary. The head gardener kindly digs a temporary pond nearer the house and fills it with trout.

Thursday

My old friend Hankinshaw pops round for a few hands of cribbage. He is somewhat fearful of catching Covid, so he wears a World War II-issue gas mask and insists on dipping the playing cards in Dettol before we pass them back and forth under the door. Hankinshaw has kindly brought me a clockwork mouse to add to my collection.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee (an old pal from my code-breaking days at Bletchley Park) telephones from Geneva, as they’re having trouble with the Large Hadron Collider. I suggest priming the starter motor with methylated spirits, which apparently does the trick. He also asks me to cast an eye over some calculations, as he thinks he’s missed a plus or minus sign somewhere.

Friday

I fancy going riding, so Youssef fetches the rocking horse from the nursery and places one of the larger Hobbema landscapes in front of it, and I imagine myself cantering through the Flemish countryside. Elon Musk (an old chum from our days selling second-hand cars on the Cromwell Road) telephones on a scratchy line from the outskirts of Pluto, anxious that his cosmic SatNav isn’t working. I advise him to take a detour around the outer moons of Neptune, thus avoiding congestion in the Milky Way. Elon kindly offers to let me share his cryogenic pod when our time comes as a thank you, but I say one of his amusing dodgem cars would be quite reward enough.

Saturday

Since the lead on the television set does not extend to my boudoir, I ask 22 of the under-gardeners to don the creams and recreate highlights of the day’s play in the cricket ground on the south lawn. It reminds me to telephone Sir Andrew Strauss (he was my fag at Radley) to offer my services as England coach. He weeps with gratitude and says my MCC membership will be upgraded to “Platinum”, and could I possibly open the batting as well?

I continue to add to the sum of the world’s knowledge by penning a monograph on Etruscan burial rites. In the pip emma I write a stiff letter to The Times about the intolerable noise made by modern lawnmowers. My exercise for the day is to flick playing cards into an upturned top hat.

While decoding the vicar’s sermon on Sunday, I realised my semaphore is a bit rusty. So I practise by getting Hankinshaw to stand on a far hillside with two flags, and we exchange badinage until he uses one of the flags to blow his nose for the umpteenth time.

Youssef tests me again and – hurrah! – I have now rid my body of Covid. Just to be on the safe side, I will only sortie from the house carried by two ostlers in my sedan chair, which will be infused with Vicks Vaporub and tincture of laudanum. n