A few weeks ago I was at home on Exmoor, cleaning and puppy-sitting, but mainly scratching and tearing at my left foot which had, overnight, exploded. Two of my toes were pink Wall’s cocktail chipolatas covered in itchy red bumps.
‘Please get me some athlete’s foot cream or powder, anything!’ I begged my husband via text, hoping he was still patrolling the shops in his black leather gloves (his choice of PPE).
I should explain: he is classified as ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ following a liver transplant, and so in theory he will be allowed back into circulation for the first time in four months this Saturday, August 1.
In fact, the notion that he has been shielding from March 23 is, I’m afraid, a bit ridiculous.
Rachel Johnson (pictured) who had itchy red bumps on her toes a few weeks ago, questions if she had Covid Toe
One, the letter telling him to stay in his room self-isolating arrived halfway through lockdown. Two, the suggestion that I would wait on him hand and foot, wearing a pinny and a visor, was never going to happen.
Three, he had no intention of not going out at all during the most perfect spring there’s ever been, and was, therefore, in our local town of Dulverton, having the strimmer fixed, when I begged him to go to the chemist for me.
When he returned, laden with Mycil products, I anointed the two red, itchy, and swollen toes. After a few days, it settled down and I forgot about it, until I read a story in this paper headlined How To Spot Covid Toe.
This ailment, it explained, was a mysterious rash appearing well after the respiratory symptoms of Covid-19 in some patients.
To me, this was conclusive — and good news.
I announced: ‘Well, that proves it! I definitely had Covid Toe. (I could swear I had the tell-tale red ‘maculopapules’ on two toes of my left foot), which means I did have Covid in February after all when I came back from Venice and was laid out with a streaming cold for five days.’ My husband laughed. It didn’t help when a poll came out revealing that vast numbers were convinced, like me, that they’d had coronavirus, despite testing data showing they hadn’t.
After the Covid Toe episode, my husband took to groaning sceptically whenever I told other people I’d had the virus.
Rachel (pictured) is convinced that she’s had the virus, despite having a negative antibody test
But I stuck to my guns. Can you blame me? We are both pretty sanguine, but the one thing that did worry me was passing it on to him — I was going to London for work — so I’d had regular antigen tests to see if I was an asymptomatic carrier (I wasn’t). Plus, if I’d had it already, I reasoned … then I could be immune now, right?
All in all, Covid Toe seemed the perfect solution to me, and many others who choose to believe they’d had the unpleasantness and therefore 1. Couldn’t get it again or 2. Infect others.
Meanwhile, I have at least one other unusual symptom, although I can’t find a catchy label for it like ‘Covid Toe’.
‘I have a sort of electric … flashing feeling,’ I say, at any opportunity. ‘My skin goes all crawly … it’s as if there’s Champagne in my veins and not blood.’
Unlike most men (who are far too frightened to mention it), Ivo insists on telling me it’s the menopause when I bang on about the fizzing and flashing, which makes me bark back, ‘But I can assure you it’s not! That ship has sailed!’
Indeed, so convinced I am that ‘Fizzy Legs’ is a weird post-viral syndrome that I am collecting fellow sufferers. In fact, I am thinking of forming a Fizzy Legs Support Network.
‘If you are so convinced you’ve had it,’ my husband suggested ‘why don’t you do an antibody test?’ It seemed like a sensible way forward.
Private antibody tests were £100. So I did the fiddly home test and posted it back.
On that agonising cliffhanger, let us pause to take in ‘the science’.
In search of corroboration, I went straight to the horse’s mouth, ie my friend Kate Bingham, chair of the UK’s Covid-19 vaccine taskforce.
She could not pronounce on Covid Toe/Fizzy Legs, but she did say that even those who had definitely, definitely had the virus weren’t necessarily immune for ever.
‘We don’t know and won’t know until we have much more data on reinfections,’ she said, then added that when it came to world-beating progress on the vaccine we shouldn’t hold our breath either as ‘it’s unlikely one dose will offer any durable protection but two might’.
Very disappointing. For everyone.
As shielding lifts on Saturday, the vulnerable may well be encouraged to step outside their homes and the hale and hearty back to the office, but we are all essentially at the same place as we were at the beginning of lockdown: still in limbo.
P. S. My antibody test was negative, but I’m still convinced I had it and am, therefore, right!
I can’t wait for Charles’s cheeky flash Dance…
Rachel revealed she’s looking forward to period drama Singapore Grip because it’s starring Charles Dance (pictured)
I can’t tell a lie: am looking forward to the lush period drama Singapore Grip on ITV, mainly because Charles Dance, pictured, is starring.
As a teenager, I locked eyes at Taunton station with the future Game of Thrones actor, and swooned so hard I almost fell under a train. My anticipation has nothing at all to do with the fact that he gets his kit off (aged 73, good for him). Still, I checked if we would be seeing more of him. ‘Not that much more, a brief cameo,’ he parried. ‘Blink and you’ll miss me!’ BOO!
Whatever else you think of the Harry book, he’s a good date
Rachel said Prince Harry’s cardinal sin was to put his woman first and his family second. Pictured: The Duchess and Duke of Sussex
It’s become fashionable to decry the stall of whining self-pity of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, pictured, as set out in the new book Finding Freedom, but something stops me from laying in.
Harry’s cardinal sin, after all, was only to put his woman first and his family second.
In the Royal family, duty is all, but Harry is a wild romantic and was prepared to sacrifice everything for Meghan Markle, the woman his older brother William dismissed as ‘this girl’. This girl. Just two words — dropped into a fraternal chat about Harry’s girlfriend of a few short months — came between the brothers and maybe changed history.
I have no doubt Harry thinks this girl is worth it, the fact that he flew Meghan all the way to the Okavango Delta in Botswana for one of their first ‘meet cutes’ (in movie parlance) was the giveaway. But golly, Harry does set the bar high for a third date, doesn’t he!
Empowered or posers?
Rachel admits she has mixed feelings about using hashtag #challengeaccepted to empower women. Pictured: Eva Longoria’s Instagram post
My Instagram feed is awash with beautiful black-and-white images of women, posted by the subjects, using the hashtag #challengeaccepted, like this one by Eva Longoria, and tagging other women to do the same. It’s supposed to be some marvellously empowering movement to make us feel good. I am mixed about this.
One, I’m not sure it does honour, even less empower, other women for us to put up flattering, self- curated portraits.
Two, and far more worrying, not a single, strong girlfriend has yet asked me to post a #blessed picture of myself!