HONEST REPORTS, DAY BY DAY FROM QUARANTINE HOTEL, HOLIDAY INN HEATHROW
OR GETTING HOME AND READJUSTING TO LIFE ON THE OUTSIDE. (CONTINUED FROM ‘DAY ELEVEN, SATURDAY RELEASE’)
Crazy though it may seem, readjusting was tougher than I had ever imagined. My friends and family had been enthusing that I must be really excited to get back and ‘Bravo you did it!’ but in reality it was all too much. I had gone through hell in the month before in Mexico when I had received the false positive test and the slope had slipped me down to rock bottom. They say you have to hit the bottom, but I seemed just to keep bouncing around at the bottom for a long time so I never really expected to rise up through the mire ever again. I was to live in purgatory for all eternity, or at least till I dropped dead in this realm.
I had left the UK for Mexico over six months ago, and even in times when life was normal I would have had a job readjusting to a very different way of life (I had started dreaming in Spanish even!) but in this new foul world I was in for a really rough ride.
LEAVING LONDON
Before leaving London I had been very depressed and had realised I must get away from its toxic new fascist policies before I went mad. Everyone who felt the same as me said that Mexico was a really good bet. If I flew to Cancun I could go on to Tulum and it was very casual and hippy dippy and was in a fear free innocent bubble of its own. I could recuperate from the insanity at home, finish my book about the Olmecs, Mayans and Aztecs while travelling to all places by bus. I could visit the many archaeological sites and museums and be able to be free again and bathing in art and history. I would also be able to swim in cenotes and snorkel on the Mayan Riviera. I would soak up vitamin D, swim, climb, write and renter life as it should be lived. I felt weak but determined.
I even had to fight to leave the UK at the now empty Gatwick airport as I was challenged by two huge aggressive policemen who jumped on me even before I went through security. I had had to borrow beg and steal to get funds to get me there, so the escape had been brutal but I had been very determined to leave. I had to get an exemption letter from my GP. Arrange my affairs knowing I would be stopping for a long time. I had written to TV licencing (I would NOT require a licence renewal) and to the council tax. I have done a massive purge on my house throwing away a lot of rubbish and leaving it clean and decluttered.
IN MEXICO AND THE DISASTROUS MONTH PRECEDING PRISON HOTEL
So having been in poor shape and still managing to escape I was very battered by the time I got to Mexico. Then, however, I started living there like the rest of the world and its turmoil didn’t exist, and my life was good, very good and my writing, exploring and studying was good, very good. Then suddenly they started closing up all the sites and museums and I realised I would have to get back home to the UK. The race to get back to Tulum and book a ticket and start preparing all the extra shite needed these days was on and so was my gradual descent into hell. (link for videos of that time)
So if you include the stress month in Mexico due to this corrupt world order being jealous of Mexico having a thriving tourist trade in the middle of their self made crisis, then add the unlawful and hugely expensive CTM ‘package’ of the quarantine hotel and its tests and ‘food’, then add the journey back and the hideous arrival at Heathrow, and THEN the ten days eleven nights in basically a prison that YOU have to pay for it was a long time suffering.
BACK HOME IN SOHO
I stepped through the door and it was all so alien. I had somehow forgotten my home of the last thirty three years. I dumped my case in the hallway picked up a few letters from the floor which I added to the huge mountain on my kitchen table. Then I just stopped. What was I even doing here? I stood stock still and just froze. Then my return nesting instinct kicked in and I unpacked and put away my passport. My suitcase had mostly three huge bags of various tea bags, coffees and creamers that I had secreted in my case as they kept bringing me the wrong ones at the prison. The other items were two pairs of knickers, shorts, T shirts and a few toiletries, the ‘welcome pack’ from prison hotels and my other papers. This put me in a quandary, it meant I should go upstairs to put the clean stuff away. I just couldn’t face going into another room, the kitchen was enough for the moment.
I eyed the mail glaring at me accusingly, dammit I would separate it into categories and open it, it was a shit job but someones gotta do it. There were over two hundred items and a lot were of a threatening nature and very unpleasant but it gave me a grim satisfaction of knowing I would face the shit and start fighting back, and I would sue them for these paper cuts opening their trash!
Once this was done I looked in the fridge and saw wine and some basics. It was a bit early for the wine but heigh ho and glug glug and puff puff then go into the living room.
There were many things that I possessed I realised. Many things that I had forgotten and really didn’t need. I had been living out of a tiny suitcase for so long that it all was rather a shock. I had forgotten my clothes and footwear, I didn’t recognise my creams and toiletries. Everything seemed to be owned by a very alien person, a person with a lot of stuff and a lot of tedious responsibilities for that stultified life. I was a different person, the scales had fallen from my eyes. In a strange way I was reborn and reborn in a cold mean new world.
I had a lovely welcome home drink with my cousin and pals at my local, the Nelly, where I recounted the brutality, hidden with a passive aggressive regime within this whole hotel scam then we all got very merry. It was lovely but the hangover the next day just added to my confusion and growing sense of panic. I had so much to do but really felt I didn’t know how to do stuff now.
Over the next few days the damage done by Horrible Inn and the inmates treatment there, made itself evident. I could’t sleep but when I did it was all about being locked up in small boxes in a foreign country. Stress dreams and awakenings. Worry about what I was doing all the time. A sort of peripheral anxiety, danger signals flashing in the corner of my eye, a feeling of not understanding what I was doing. Flashing from rage to despair I battled on with bailiffs and getting my gas reconnected, went to my banks to sort out the hacked card and paid in last of my emergency money and pesos into the other bank. I developed my old Chislehurst cockneyfied accent to deal with the difficult stuff like distributing a begging flyer for mys sons sick dog, it made me sound tougher than I felt. I closed the curtains against prying eyes and battled with my ‘to do’ list grimly.
The fact that Soho was full to bursting to the seems with idiotic people didn’t improve my mood, it made me feel angrier and still does as I write this today. I feel angry at all these people pretending everything is OK when it’s clearly not. I’m furious at a system that let me down so badly and is mocking us in plain sight. I feel in danger and don’t really trust anyone, but I’m dealing with it slowly, and the things that have come to light, from my doctor for example, only prove why one should be wary now.
I’ll explain that next time. Love to you all x
Old Bird Travels Solo! 