There have not been many cartwheels in Cazmania this year. I started the year literally on top of the world, skiing in Cervinia, watching fireworks light the sky over the Matterhorn as the new year dawned. By the 2nd January I’d already been to Switzerland, Italy and England, more countries in 2 days than I visited in the whole of 2020 and 2021 put together. I joked that I’d started the year on such a high, it could only go downhill from here.

I was right!

I walked out of my classroom on 21st January, feeling great, looking forward to the weekend with absolutely no reason to suspect that I had just worked my final day at school.

Covid hit that weekend, the pings were coming thick and fast, letting me know that I had been in contact with yet another positive case. It was no surprise when I woke up dehydrated and headachey on Sunday morning with a satisfyingly thick purple line on my antigen test.

But it was a surprise when everyone else got better and I didn’t. During the isolation period I kept in touch with all my friends in the Covid Club, they had good days and bad days, and I thought I was just the same, sometimes I would lie on the sofa with the headache from hell but other days I would clean out 4 kitchen cupboards and be super pleased with myself.

But as everyone else started testing negative and going back to their lives, I did not. My immune system isn’t the best, maybe it was natural that I would need a few more days than everyone else before I was back to normal. But a few more days turned into a few more weeks and then a few more months. I kept thinking “next week I’ll be better” but next week never came.

The year has gone by in a sleepy headachey blur. I had planned to lose a stone this year, instead I’ve gained an extra one. My brain has been the worst. I haven’t been able to read novels for most of this year, let alone write my own. Even the most normal things: a walk on the beach, a hot chocolate with a friend, a dash around the supermarket, would have to be paid for later, usually two hours of sitting on the sofa in a foggy trance waiting for my brain to shut down and reboot itself.

It’s not over. Sometimes it feels like it’s over but then I do too much and tumble back down to square one for a few days or weeks. I’ve been back to my classroom and visited my students a few times. They treat me like a celebrity now that they don’t see me every day. I always have the most wonderful time but then spend the next three days recovering.

And so I have made the brave/crazy/stupid/sensible/sad/exciting decision to quit my job! Nobody knows how long Long Covid actually is, but it makes sense to me that I will get better faster if I spend the next year as a lady of leisure, doing things that make me feel well.

So tomorrow, instead of being a classroom, greeting my students as we begin the next academic year together, I will be packing up my car and setting off on a road trip. Cornwall is only down the road from me, but with Putsborough Beach on my doorstep I have never needed to venture any further. This year though I am going to make the most of not being tied to school holidays and do things I wouldn’t usually do, kicking off with a Cornish road trip. I will take it slow and steady and hopefully not do anything to trigger another tumble back to square one.

This is the first piece of writing I have done since before covid. I’m sure that this year of adventures will throw up many more things that I want to write about and I hope I will be well enough to do that writing. I am also expecting to cartwheel on a different Cornish beach every day for the next 21 days, but unless I make a friend who is good at fast action photography I will only be able to take a photo of the beaches, not the cartwheels!

Watch this space!!