Mist

    Car headlights appeared, spectre like in the night, materializing almost out of nowhere and floating like eyes from an unconnected from head. Driving felt precarious in these conditions, bends in the road, potholes (of which there were many) and other vehicles constantly took me by surprise, all shrouded in a thick, heavy fog. 

A cloud had descended on the Forest of Dean.  It was not an unfamiliar experience, sitting as we were so high in the landscape, we often woke up in a misty veil which might stay for a few hours or a couple of days.  From our bedroom window, the distant hills of Malvern and the Black Mountains usually such familiar humps on the horizon, were blocked completely from sight by this white, impenetrable cloud. It made us feel cocooned, isolated, like an island in the sky, the whole world miles and miles away, just us, dreamlike, floating in the heavens.

Occasionally we would wake up on a cool Spring or Autumn morning and find ourselves perched atop the clouds. The mist sitting like pools of soft foamy milk in breakfast bowls in the valleys and dips of the landscape and we would look out like fairy kings and queens over our fantasy cloud kingdom. The mist took on a magical quality on days like this; it seemed to hide treasures and secrets in its lacy folds, I could imagine it sprinkling magic into the ground as it floated dreamily across, planting spring seeds or sending the ground to sleep.

 

The mist seemed to take on a physical form on days like this.  Driving through the Forest would take you in and out of the resting mist as if diving in and out of a milky ocean.  One minute above the mist, the air crystal clear and fresh, the next diving down into a cotton wool sea, and just as quickly rising out of it again.  At other times the mist would seem alive, crawling menacingly over hedges and tumbling into the road like a deadly virus out to consume all it encountered.

But we were in the midst of winter now, a cold, frosty and icy January, neither the hope of new life which spring brings, nor the cosy cuddle of Autumn, but the bleak, endless, hopelessness of winter. 17^th century German Romanticist painter Casper David Friedrich perfectly captures the feeling in his painting “Wanderer above a sea of fog”, we stand surveying a bleak horizon, brooding and Darcy-like taking in the moody landscape as if it were doing this on purpose just to spite us. And yet even in the face of death and hopelessness, the Forest continued to take me by surprise in forming beauty with the most unlikely of materials; Dark, bare forests transformed into beautiful enigmatic paintings, bare tree limbs and branches, less spider like and more delicate, seemed to reach through the mist and reveal themselves in layers like a series of net curtains gradually revealing the players on a stage, the performer; nature itself.

 

Wandered Above a Sea of Fog by Casper David Friedrich

On a forest walk at this time of year I imagine myself as Cathy in Wuthering Heights, or Jane Eyre walking through a Gothic, enigmatic, Northern landscape, holding up imaginary skirts and encountering mysterious men who are taciturn, ancient hansom and loyal, but who aren’t men at all but trees only disguised as mysterious men, hiding their beauty and soul behind a rough, craggy bark, bare branches, and emerging hero-like through layers and layers of vapours chiffon. One could easily fall in love with a man like that, and just as easily I have fallen in love with the Forest.

But alas, I wasn’t Cathy and the Forest of Dean is no Heathcliff, especially not on nights like this, nights where  I am just a mother driving her son to Cub Scouts, knuckles whitely gripping the steering wheel hoping that the next bend in the road would reveal no more surprises and I could get him to the Scout hut without encountering another car along a narrow winding lane forcing me to reverse uphill, blind.  I had done that before on a clear day and I didn’t fancy it when I could see less than three meters ahead, let alone behind and without the benefit of headlights to guide me. No, driving in the Forest on a misty night did not transport me to a romantic scene from an Edwardian novel, it left me shaken and longing for a cosy sofa and roaring fire to envelop and hold me, the only defences against the cold and damp Forest of Dean winters. That was winter here, cold and damp, a damp that penetrated to the bone, with no blustery, moorland wind to drive it away.  A damp which sits and waits for the forces of its enemy spring to drive it back into the wet ground and rotting wood. 

But I wasn’t about to let the cold and damp crush my spirits, because I knew that that was what was needed in order to experience the rich, greenness of a Forest of Dean Spring. The mists would eventually melt away like a winter snow, and like a bride lifting her veil at the alter the Forest’s beauty would be revealed.  And so, I left the car on the muddy drive, headed into my house to warm up and closed the door against the penetrating mist, it could fill fields and spill into roads and drift quietly through forests, but it couldn’t enter my own safe dwelling.  And through the bedroom window in the morning I admired the beauty of the mist which shrouded our house still, and I pulled my dressing gown tighter around my shoulders girding myself for another chill day, I lit a candle and imagined myself as a heroine in a Bronte novel, waiting for her hero to return.

New Year's Day

 

 I drew breath sharply through clenched teeth as I stepped gingerly down the slippery stone steps of the ancient well, it’s water’s a constant 11 degrees rising painfully up my bare thighs, making my heart race and mind swim.

Above me the bare branches of oak, beech and ash forming a crooked and bleak web-like roof beneath a stony grey sky, and surrounding bare earth, all muddy, wet roots and rotting damp leaves reminded me that we were in the midst of winter.  Why then would I be choosing to plunge my body into the icy waters of St Anthony’s Well on this rather unpromising and uninviting day?

I wasn’t the only brave, or perhaps mad soul who had chosen to be metaphorically baptised by the Forest on this gloomy day, because this was a spot where many people came to feel the refreshing exhilaration of the well, in addition to experiencing it’s supposed healing powers and ancient mystery.

 It was the first of January 2026 and people came, both Forester and Outsider alike to be re-born, refreshed and renewed by the ancient waters of the well.  We weren’t the first of course, people had been coming to this spot for centuries.  Thought to be build by the monks of what was once the nearby Flaxley Abbey, in the 18^th Century, though having been used for ritual purposes for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before.  I wasn’t there for the history though; I was there to wash off the old year and begin the new cleansed and refreshed. 

Refreshing was one word to use for the cool crisp waters which lapped deceptively  peacefully inside the square stone pool, I girded myself with several deep breaths and hands clenched together, prayer-like under my chin, as if calling on God for succour, I summoned my courage and dunked myself up to the neck, holding myself in the water and counting a minute before raising myself up, reborn into the cool, damp air of the Forest.  I beat a hasty exit up the algae covered steps and quickly wrapped up in a fluffy dressing gown, legs red raw, teeth chattering and shivering all over.

What a way to start the year, surrounded by the wonder of nature however bleak it appeared at this time of year. The pain and discomfort were worth it for the cleansing feeling experienced after a dip, and after hastily and awkwardly drying and dressing myself under a dressing gown, I sat with two friends and slowly began to thaw with the help of a hot tea and warming chatter, watching whilst other brave pilgrims took their turn in the sacred pool.

January 2026 was my fifth winter in the Forest of Dean, and I was gradually becoming accustomed to the features of its seasons, landscape, flora and fauna as the year rolled on. A wet and cool part of the country, especially on the higher ground where I had made my home with my husband and four sons, but enchanting and magical, mysterious and captivating as well.  We were well compensated for its dampness and cold by its beauty and abundance, and I looked forward to another year to explore and learning about this unique place which was The Forest of Dean. 

Covid Story

 

About this time 4 years ago I was collecting Paul from hospital on his 40^th birthday.  He had been in Gloucestershire Royal hospital for about 5 days and, although still extremely unwell, no longer needed to be on oxygen or a drip for antibiotics and anti inflammatories and was well enough to come home.  Both he and I were still very unwell after contracting covid sometime before, we were both too unwell to look after our three children and sat at home for a week like an elderly couple recuperating from a surprisingly bad response to covid.

I had managed to get my act together enough the week he was in hospital to do a Morrisons order so that we had some nice food and a birthday cake when he came out.  I answered the door to the delivery drive whilst in the midst of a coughing fit, and through gasps told him I had covid, at which point he turned tail and practically ran out of our drive leaving all the delivery boxes with me.  I laboriously brought all the shopping in, each step exhausting.

I also had the genius idea to buy a balloon arch off Amazon which I planned to erect over the front door.  I soon realized that I was not going to be able to blow up all those balloons so what should have been a gorgeous rainbow of green silver and white shiny and spangled balloons ended up being three balloons which I sellotaped to the front door.  When I returned from hospital all three had blown off the front door and ended up in the sheep field next to our house.  I think they’re still there somewhere because neither of us had the strength or energy to climb over the fence to fetch them back.  Paul had to just imagine what it should have been.

As Paul’s birthday approaches I become more and more anxious.  The memories of this awful time come flooding back, but perhaps even more triggering than that are the people who continue to deny covid in one capacity or another, either they think it wasn’t real, or not as bad as it was made out to be, or it was caused by something other than a virus, and I wanted to put my story out there not just as a form of therapy for me, but also to debunk silly conspiracy theories about it which till persist today, in fact are perhaps even more prevalent as the memory of how serious covid was fades. I am sure some people are so fixated on their theories that I can’ t change their minds but it will perhaps give some people food for thought, and that is why I wanted to share my story.

 

It was September 2021, I was about six months pregnant and I began to feel unwell,  the children were also showing symptoms and we did a flow test which proved positive for me.  We probably tested the children too I can’t remember.  We did the other type of test too where we had to go to a drive through clinic.  Weirdly these tests came back negative, which we later found out was due to an error is the testing.  It was a strange time because I didn’t officially have covid but was beginning to feel very unwell, and felt certain that I did in fact have covid.

Before I go on I will tell you now that none of us had received any covid vaccines.  This is important because some people believe that it was the covid vaccine that caused the serious cases of covid and covid deaths and not covid itself, and I want to make it quite clear that it was not the covid vaccine that caused us to be so ill.  I realise revealing this information also puts me in the position of having people think we must be a bit stupid to not have taken the vaccine.  The reason we hadn’t was in two parts, firstly we have just been very very busy with moving house, becoming unexpectedly pregnant and trying to find our feet in a new area.  We were also a little bit cautious about the idea of taking a fairly new vaccine.  I was pregnant and fearful of how the vaccine might affect me or my baby.  Paul, although entirely in remission at the time has Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis, and we had no idea (and neither did anyone else) how the vaccine would affect this inflammatory condition. I think I’d say we had a healthy caution rather than any sort of conspiracy theory about the jabs..

Our view of Covid generally was of cautions skepticism, there was so much information or rather mis-information going round it was very difficult to know what to believe.  We felt that as two healthy adults, both young, with no serious co-morbidities, we did not think Covid would be serious for us it was unlikely that we would experience Covid as anything more than a bad cold.

How wrong we were.

 A lot of what happened is a bit of a blur, we of course isolated ourselves as soon as we found out we had covid and stayed home, pottering around, Paul hoped for a while that is he wore his mask there was a chance he wouldn’t catch it, but of course living with 4 infected people made that impossible. Initially we had high spirits, hoping this would just be like a bad cold but we Paul and I progressively more and more poorly. The feeling was like a heavy cold but with an odd detached, fizzy feeling in the head, we lost our sense of taste and smell of course and eventually began to cough. 

The most worrying thing was that Paul had a high temperature which didn’t seem to go down no matter what he did.  He took paracetamol but it didn’t help reduce his temperature.  He lay in bed with a fan going, with no sheets on, a cool cloth on his head but his temperature was going to from between 38 and 40 degrees. He also had low blood oxygen, which we were able to check because we had several blood oxygen monitors having had to use them during Corbyn’s asthma attacks.

Eventually we realized after phone calls to 111, that Paul ought to see a Dr, he saw a village GP who told him to go to hospital. I took him in and left him to get sorted, whilst I headed home with the boys.  I was obviously very worried about what would happen if I also got so ill that I would need to go into hospital.  We had only been living in the Forest of Dean for about six month and didn’t know people that well, let alone people who had already had Covid who we wouldn’t infect.

Fortunately I had one friend whose family I knew had already had covid. One friend.

 I message her asking if the scenario should occur that I should need to go to hospital could I leave them with her, and she said I could. I knew this would be a huge burden on her and her family because she had six children of her own all living in a three bedroom house. I am not even sure what the alternative would have been if I hadn’t been able to drop the children with her. 

Anyway,  I was at home with the boys, I had got out some corn flour and water and food colouring for them to play with as I was so very ill I couldn’t teach them or do anything.  I could barely make them food, and decided I too needed to see a Dr.  The village Dr advised me to go into hospital as well, I had to enact my plan to take the boys to my friend, I hurriedly (which wasn’t at all very fast) packed bags for them with  a very small amount of clothes and their tooth brushes, I was so ill and had so little energy I couldn’t do more than that, and we headed off.

After dropping them with my friend, I took myself to hospital.

When I arrived I had to head to a special ward, not A and E, a mysterious door with a red arrow on it.  I went in, there were no chairs, no waiting area, I stood not knowing what to do, already exhausted from walking from the carpark to the place.  I began to slump down on to the floor as I couldn’t stand any longer, when luckily a couple (who I think were lost)  found me a chair.

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it was like something from an apocalypse, people wondering around, healthcare staff rushing from one place to another, not even looking at me, I didn’t know who to speak to, no one seemed to know who I should speak to I just waited and was eventually taken to a room.  It was empty except for one of those horrible hospital chairs, and I waited there, listening to the sounds of other patients coughing, calling for help, telling nurses they were coughing up blood an other such horrors.

After some time a Dr came in.  He came in and saw me, then left muttering something about goggles.  It seemed he couldn’t find any goggles to wear, they were so low on PPE,  and apparently covid was contractable through the mucus membrane of the eye so he needed goggles to protect himself.  He eventually found a pair, but they didn’t have any elastic, so he had to hold them to his eyes whilst he examined me.  That is how diabolical the situation was in the hospital.  The dr had to hold goggles up to his eyes, and examine me with one hand.  I really hope that that Dr was ok, and didn’t catch Covid off me.

After more waiting it was decided I should have a chest xray, I had to sign a form consenting to this knowing it would put my unborn baby at risk of cancer.  But I didn’t know what else to do but to agree to it, I felt so unwell and I didn’t want to put any further risk on my pregnancy.  Fortunately the xray came back clear and I was eventually sent home with an inhaler and assigned a nurse who would contact me, I had to send regular updates on my blood oxygen levels.

I had been regularly messaging Paul at this point and it seemed that he was about to be released from hospital too, so I sat in the car and waited for him to be sent home.  After some time I received a call from Paul saying that they had told him he had sepsis, they were sending the crash team in and he was being admitted. 

As he was about to be discharged he had asked a nurse to check his temperature again as he wasn’t feeling right and on finding it was very high, thank God, he was not allowed home.  I think if he hadn’t asked for his temperature to be taken again, he would have come home with me and very likely died from multiple organ failure.  That’s what they hospital said they thought was about to happen to him.

So I sat in the car in a state of shock, I couldn’t go in to hospital to see him, that was out of the question, so I just had to drive myself home and wait and see if my husband was going to live.

I spent a very wakeful night praying that Paul might live and messaging him and my family back and forth.

I woke up the next morning not knowing if Paul would still be alive, but praise God, they had kept him alive, kept him from multiple organ failure.  He was ok, but very ill.  He was on oxygen and multiple drugs to kill the infection that had caused the sepsis and to reduce inflammation.  

I spent that week at home alone with only the dog for company.  I was in a state of shock barely functioning, I had no appetite and kept forgetting to eat.  I watched episodes of some reality TV show about weddings, that I had forgotten.  I had frequent extreme bouts of coughing, during which I would occasionally pee myself.  I had to keep messaging the covid nurse with my oxygen levels, which were barely satisfactory.  In fact sometimes I lied about them being higher than they were because I desperately didn’t want to go back to hospital.

Paul was having an even worse time in hospital.  To give you a little idea of what it was like, it was a mixed sex ward (honestly I shudder at the thought of being in a mixed sex ward, as a woman being so vulnerable with covid) there were individuals on the ward not of sound mind and the ward was extremely under staffed.  There were times when there was no water available, and no one able to fetch any, there were times when no food came up to the ward, they had missed meals, and were brought sandwiches later, it was a complete mess.  One time Paul tried to go to the toilet and was struggling to breath only to find his mobile oxygen tank hadnt been activated when it was issued to him. Another time he was coughing so badly, he reached out to a nurse for help, and help helped him by closing the curtain around his bed leaving him alone and frightened, coughing and fighting for breath. It was a completely nightmarish scenario, which you probably can’t even imagine if you weren’t there. 

On the day before Paul was released from hospital, it was agreed that I could go in to take him some clean clothes and food.  I packed from clean pants and t shirts and some fruit,  the food there had been very very bad and Paul lost a lot of weight whilst he was in hospital.

At this point I want to dispel another Covid myth. The idea that people only died from Covid because they went into hospital.  Paul was very ill when he went into hospital and the hospital not only saved his life but enabled him to recover.  He didn’t go into hospital a bit unwell and get worse because of the treatment.  He got better because of the treatment.

So I took all these bits in for him. One of the strange side effects we experienced from covid was inflammation in our bodies in places where we had previously had injuries or inflammation. So, for example, Paul had a very aching elbow from where he had broken it after being hit by a car about 15 years prior.  I had an extremely painful hip because of sciatica pain which hard flared up massively.

So because of the sciatica pain I had to walk very slowly and very painfully into the hospital with Paul’s things. I wasn’t able to go into his ward but left his bags by the door and retreated a few meters,  he then came to the door to fetch them.  I don’t think we were able to hug or anything like that. I then had to turn and leave and painfully go back home. On the way back I stopped off to see the boys at my friends house.  Her and her husband had been sleeping on a sofa bed in the living room so that my boys could sleep together in their double bed.  She was keeping nine boys fed, watered and entertained.  An absolute angel in disguise.  I stopped by but very very ill when I was there and nearly fainted from the exhaustion of driving to hospital and back and having not eaten enough, I remember not being sure if I had even eaten that day.  It was clear that I wasn’t well enough to take the boys home, but she said she thought the boys  might be coming to their end of their tolerance for being there.  I went home to recover. 

The next day was where our story began where I collected Paul from hospital on his 40th birthday. I had asked some friends that week if they could send him a birthday card just to bring a bit more cheer to the day.  I drove us both home and I was thanking and praising God all the way.  As we passed a church I had a sudden urge to go in and fall on my knees and just pray out thanksgiving that my husband was alive, but thought Paul might not appreciate it so much!

We got home, imagined the balloons on the door and collapsed on the sofa.

That afternoon the boys were dropped back at our house by my friend and we had a little celebration with the cake I had ordered and some other snacks and bits. 

Paul and I were still extremely ill thought at this point so, since we were all now testing negative for covid, my mum and dad came over and took the boys to their house for another 5 days.

I cannot express enough how very unwell we were.  We couldn’t look after our children and could barely feed ourselves.  We hobbled around the house, sat out in the garden trying to get some late September vitamin d, and just tried to manage. That week was a total blur and I was just grateful that Paul was ok.  We were still anxious that we might get ill again, but thankfully we continued to slowly recover. A few friends and people from church very kindly brought round some meals for us, and some of my friends clubbed together and sent over a massive hamper of snacks and treats for us which was just amazing.

We decided at one point that it would be lovely for the boys when they came back, to have a trampoline!  So we ordered one online (that was the easy part)  and we spent an entire day erecting it.  A job that probably should have taken us no more than about an hour took a whole day.  We were so slow, and tired and exhausted.

Eventually we were well enough to have the boys back, though our sense of taste and smell didn’t return for a few more days.  I remember the day I could taste again, we had cooked a fry up as a treat and I could just taste the fried tomato that I was eating, it was very exciting.

Paul went on to have long covid and struggled with his breathing issues, exhaustion and brain fog for many months afterwards.  I went on to have a healthy baby, although was diagnosed with asthma, after returning home from hospital.  I’ll never know if having covid triggered this or not but that is the only long term issue I seem to have had (aside from trauma).  We all went on to have covid two more times after this,  thankfully no where near as bad, much more like the bad cold we had expected the first time.

We do not know why we were so ill when many people were fine, we will never know, I can see no reason for two healthy people to become so diabolically ill I can only guess that we contracted a particularly nasty strain.

I continue to experience trauma from this episode of my life.  I am triggered around this time of year, which is why I decided to write all this down and put it out there, to tell everyone what happened and banish some myths that still persist about covid. 

I still get triggered when I see people writing nonsense about covid online or in conversations.  I think one of the maddest theories is that covid was caused by 5G. I am at a point in life where I think people who had these wild theories are actually just rather silly and possibly a bit naive, and in spite of being a person who really doesn’t generally like conflict, I have no qualms about contradicting these people. But on my more sympathetic days I think people come up with these theories as a way of protecting themselves from fear.  If they believe they are safe for whatever reason (because they didn’t have the jab or whatever) then they can banish fear and feel safe.

I have no interest at all now in conspiracy theories  If you didn’t get very sick from covid there is one reason and one reason only, and that’s luck (and God’s grace of course, but for ease of communication we will call is luck, or chance, or whatever).  You were very lucky that you didn’t have underlying health conditions, or were old, and you were very lucky you didn’t catch a particularly nasty strain like Paul and I did.  You are not special in not getting sick, you’re just lucky.

The only other issue I have is with the sound effects from the Switch game, Zelda, that Paul played whilst he was ill at home, and the sound of the whirring of the fan. When I hear those sounds I have to leave the room, as I get a horrible feeling of the memory of that time, and I’d rather avoid it if possible.

I can avoid those sounds which trigger the memories, but I often can’t avoid stupid conspiracy theories, I know that people want to make themselves feel safe (though of course they’d never admit this is the real reason they come up with them) but the problem is with life is that we are never really safe, fear and danger lurk around every corner, and you can’t eliminate it by avoiding vaccines, or paracetamol, or by eating fermented food, or avoiding processed food or taking special herbs or homeopathy or anything, the only way to immunize ourselves from fear is through Jesus Christ. And if you want to know more about that please message me and I am happy to talk to you about him.

So there we have it, our covid story finally down on screen, for my own therapeutic purposes and for the benefit of those who still think covid was just the flu or was all made up. (healthy people don’t nearly die from the flu)

Long term lessons I have learnt from this experience are that when you are going through dark times, people go out of their way to show their kindness and I will always be thankful for that.  I now also have renewed skepticism in what people now call alternative therapies (can we go back to the days when we called it complementary therapy?)

I am so thankful we have the NHS has we have pharmaceuticals.  Of course there is corruption in every system, no system is perfect because they’re made up of sinful people, but I think on the whole they are striving for help, not harm. Not everyone is evil, not every system is evil.  I still use herbs, and homeopathy etc, but  accept the fact that we live in a fallen world and there isn’t always a natural answer for all our ailments, no matter how much some individuals would like to believe that. On this side of heaven there will always be suffering, and until the day comes when all mourning and pain ceases I will take the best that science AND nature have to offer.