Jousting Tournament with the Knights of Middle England
Falconry
Blacksmith and Medieval Cooking
Jesters
Jousting at Blenheim Palace
Riverwalk in Oxford, 2022
Long Covid – When a mild case is not so mild after all
16 March 2020
Covid still seems far away, only few cases reported in the news, Germany is already speaking about lockdown, in the UK it is still business as usual. I wake up with a sore throat and feeling a little bit strange. By afternoon I start coughing. It seems like a weird kind of cold, because normally I first get a runny nose and stuffed sinuses. None of that this time. I start making jokes about Covid, but of course I am not taking it seriously. Nonetheless, I cancel all tutoring sessions and meeting with friends and start self-isolating at home – just to be safe.
I am on a deadline for articles, so for the first few days I simply continue working. I always work when slightly ill, as a freelancer I don’t allow myself the luxury of taking a break. It’s just a cold, and I am young and healthy anyway, so Covid shouldn’t be an issue.
21 March 2020
All articles done and nothing urgent to do to keep me going, I finally crash. I am so tired I don’t want to get up anymore, the cough has gotten increasingly worse, my lungs burn and for the first time I experience what I now call “the bear hug”, the feeling as if a giant bear has put his claws around my chest and back and gives a good long squeeze. I don’t have any fever, so it can’t be that bad, right? Just a mild case.
The next couple of days are a bit of a blur. What do you do when you are sick and on your own? A bit of reading, Netflix, sleeping, the sun is out so I sit on my balcony and message friends about getting a tan thanks to what I by now think is Covid… I think I will be fine. This should be the worst of it.
28 March 2020, day 12 of Covid
It’s dark outside and I am scared. I can’t breathe. Every breath is followed by coughing, I gasp for air, interrupted by another coughing fit. I have to throw up from coughing.
I feel drunk, everything is blurry and confusing.
I need to use the bathroom, I half walk along the walls, half crawl. Walking hurts.
My lips have turned blue, my fingers as well. I am too stubborn to call for help. Ambulances are just for the worst cases, right? I will be fine.
I call a friend, instead, ask him to stay on the phone just in case. I can’t speak, but I can listen. Breathing is hard. We hang up after two hours, the coughing has eased a little, it starts again later that evening.
The last time I look at my phone it’s eleven, I don’t think I can sleep… I can’t sleep like this…
Nothing. What happened after? I can’t remember… I must have blacked out, either from lack of oxygen or from tiredness.
Maybe I should not have been alone that night.
29 March 2020
My alarm is ringing at 10 am. My lungs are on fire, and I don’t think I can get up, but at least I am alive…
It’s 12pm and I have two online students booked in until 2pm. I put on some make-up and a brave face. Both students are just seven years old, and they don’t need to know. We play language games, I am still coughing, but I pretend everything is fine. Covid is not scary at all!
2pm. I hang up and shut down my computer. How to get from my desk to my bed? It’s not that far… kitchen floor is fine, too. Just a few minutes, then I can walk the rest. Maybe 30 minutes? 30 minutes on the floor sounds reasonable… I forget time. I sleep. On the floor, in my bed. Sleeping and coughing. And repeat. The day passes, another night. Another day. All the same. It is just a mild case, I will be fine.
End of March/ Early April 2020
I am. I am fine. I slowly recover, still tired, still in pain. But I am slowly getting better. 21 days after the first symptoms I finally leave my flat again. The first two days I only go up to the roof garden, still avoiding people. I start taking walks, but only manage short rounds to the park and back, my legs are wobbly and I am still dizzy. I blame the three weeks of doing nothing and maybe confess to myself, that Covid hit me a little harder than expected. It is a weird time. I went into self-isolation still in winter and come out of it in spring. Everything seems brighter, the colours more intense, the scent of flowers following me on my walks. I lie in the grass in Florence Park and can’t get enough of the sunshine and people’s voices in the distance. I’m in love with the world.
End of April I start cycling. I normally hate cycling in Oxford, because of the traffic, now it is quiet and barely any cars are on the road. For the first time, I cycle all the way into the city centre, the High Street is empty, and the sandstone walls reflect the warm orange light of an early spring sunset. I could do this every day. And indeed, I do it a second day in a row. The third I can’t get on my bike. My head is spinning. Too much too soon, I think.
May – July 2020
April turns into May and I am getting worse. I can’t walk through the park without breathlessness. I blame the hayfever, I never had it that bad, though. Someone recommends an oximeter, it takes a while to get one, because they are sold-out everywhere. I feel dizzy again. This time I check my blood oxygen levels. 84%. I don’t know what that means and have to look it up online. The NHS advice is to call 999 and or go to the nearest A&E if “your blood oxygen levels are 92% or less”, I pretend I didn’t read that and take a nap instead. At some point in 2020 I start joking that they might just leave the ambulance parked in front of my house. Whenever I attempt the slightest bit of exercise – a walk around the park, some light yoga, some days even simple household tasks like cleaning the kitchen – my blood oxygen levels start dropping. The low-90s are a normal by now, on bad occasions it drops lower. 79% feels like being drunk and on a rocking boat at the same time. The world is turning upside down.
Other weird symptoms follow. I instinctively blame the back pain on my desk job, but then my legs and feet start hurting, too, my ankles are swelling up. I have bruises on my legs, after a walk my veins look like a watercolour painting, streaks of blood evaporating into the surrounding tissue like paint on water-soaked paper. My brain is no longer working properly. My keys, where are my keys? I can’t find them. And why is there an herb jar in my fridge and not in the usual drawer? I am making flat breads in the pan and completely forget about them until the fire alarm goes off. I’ve become so used to the smell of burning, I’ve started to ignore it. Phantom smells, they happen a lot by now. Most times it’s burned plastic, on other occasions it’s rotten fruit.
I can’t write. Sentences are muddled, grammar incorrect, nothing makes sense… I can’t write. I can’t live without writing. I sit at my computer and cry. This has never happened before. I can’t find the right words, neither in English, nor in German and I often mix both languages. It even happens when speaking with friends. I am tired and want to reply to a question, but the words don’t come. I stare for a while and then say something else.
By accident I learn on Twitter that others are complaining about lingering symptoms as well, one of the accounts I’ve been following because of their historic research recommends a Slack group. I am not crazy! I am not making it up! What a relieve…
In July I finally have an in-person appointment with my GP. She doesn’t know what to do: there is no research, no treatment. She is prescribing an inhaler to take whenever I get what she thinks is Covid-related asthma. The bruises on my legs? They will fade over time, she says. They are still there. Two years later. One on my ankle, one on my shin.
July – September 2020
The height of summer. I am less confused now. Rest helps. I can occasionally cycle to the river, walk a little bit more. The inhaler helps with the constant breathlessness and coughing fits. I find a strange rhythm that sometimes works, but more often doesn’t. I am not used to taking it lightly, I am not used to having to rest. Walking or lying in the sunshine a little too long are causing fevers now, my body is not able to regulate its temperature. I start Yoga again, mostly breathing exercises and light stretches, and start meditating against the constant state of panic.
People ask me to go out, do things, be active, and I want to. We go for walks and have days out, barbecues on the roof and swimming sessions in the river, the heights of an adventure followed by nights waking up crying. Why am I crying? Only fully awake I realise that the pain in my body has creeped into my dreams and that muscle spasms in the legs and back have woken me up. The bear is back, he is an unwelcome old friend by now. My dreams are more vivid, too, and more often than not, they are nightmares about past hurts and pains I’d rather forget. I do no longer like the nights, neither the dreams, not the restless turning and twisting, trying to find a position that does not hurt.
September 2020 – January 2021
I’ve been accepted into a Covid study, they are checking for organ damage and for the first time I am put into an MRI and find it strangely relaxing. It takes months for the results to come back, all the while Long Covid has found a new playground: my heart. Oh, the joy of trying to work while the resting heartrate fluctuates between 120 and 140. I feel like I am in a constant state of alertness, in flight mode by doing nothing. Sometimes, though, my heart decides to go the opposite direction and the resting heart rate drops into the low 40s, also not great.
One night in autumn, I think I’ve been working too much again the day before, I wake up at 3am, my head hurts and I feel nauseous. The left side of my body is in pain and again I am short of breath. I get the oximeter. Maybe the oxygen levels are too low again, the inhaler will help with that. Oxygen at 98%. Perfect. My heartrate, though, slightly freaks me out. It can’t be right! I adjust the oximeter, try again. Again, with the same result: my heartrate is jumping up and down, 43 to 128 to 46 to 142 to low 40s again – each time within 20-30 seconds. I stare at the monitor and don’t know what to do. I message two friends, asking them to call me in the morning. I am not sure I will be ok. I am not ok. Fuck. I do yoga breathing and try to calm myself. Maybe this is just panic or anxiety… maybe… I stop monitoring the heartrate. I don’t want to know. I want to sleep. Shit, I don’t want to sleep. If I sleep, I might not wake up. The world is spinning, I feel free and light and… it is morning and my friend knocks on my door. She tried to call, but I did not pick up. I am so tired. Please let me sleep.
It happened again, once. This time I am less afraid, I’ve been there. I’ve survived once, I can do so again. In January my MRI results come back. No heart damage, blood still shows heightened inflammation, though.
Neck pain. My head is too heavy. I can’t stand or sit. I spend a month solely working from my bed with pillows propped up behind me. My head shouldn’t feel like it weighs a ton, but it does, and my neck can’t carry it…
February and March 2021
I learn to say “no” and take it easier. Another lockdown helps, nobody wants to do anything anyway and I can finally rest. I find a rhythm that works and for the first time in months I feel that I am actually improving. I am happy. I’ve been for a while. I’ve never been this calm, relaxed and at ease with myself in all my life. I feel like me again, just a slightly new version. When I was a girl, I wanted to be an Elf or Rohirrim in Lord of the Rings, now I just want to be a Hobbit, eat good food, tend to my garden – and paint. Are there any Hobbits who paint?
April – July 2021
Fantastic. Covid has moved on again, causing havoc in the next part of my body. Bladder and kidney, apparently. In April I get a bad bladder infection that also affects my kidneys, I am put on the first dose of antibiotics. During a check-up it also turns out that months of constant coughing has completely wracked my pelvic floor muscles and slightly dislocated my bladder. Months of physio follow to strengthen the muscles, but the dislocated bladder is sadly for life. Awesome. Something I really needed. Yes, sarcasm helps!
By May I am on my second bladder infection, this time the antibiotics do not work and I am carrying it around with me in a more or less severe state until I give in and call my GP again. Another course of antibiotics, this time against resistant strains, to finally get rid of the infection. I also start taking D-Mannose, recommended by a friend, which apparently has proven quite effective against recurrent bladder infections. I am still taking it daily and it does seem to do the trick.
This spring I start eating meat again for the first time in years – not entirely by choice. I need to change my diet. I can’t eat any lactose or Gluten, something that still continues until today, even though the Gluten sensitivity seems to have eased a little and one slice of bread is no longer causing days of stomach, kidney and back pains. I have also developed some new food allergies: pears cause a runny nose and pecan nuts a skin rash. I am still not sure how much Covid is to blame for this and how much repeated high doses of antibiotics over a couple of months.
August 2021 to Today
Long Covid is still not gone, I think I am just normally better in handling it. I had to learn my limits and develop more discipline. Most days I feel half-normal again. Some things are different though: I get ill easily and if I catch something I will be seriously sick. A simple stomach bug I shared with my friends over Christmas had me bed-ridden with a high fever for a week, a cold causes asthmatic coughs and again low-oxygen levels, which are also often triggered by cold winter air. Coming back from a walk can easily find me lying on the floor of my living room like a fish out of water… I still struggle to stick to my own rhythm and forget that overdoing it will have consequences: days in bed, coughing and a visit from my old friend, the bear. I have learned some warning signs though: waking up with shaking hands in the morning, twitching muscles and deep-seated pain between my shoulder blades, which is often the first indicator that my lungs are getting inflamed and sore.
Many people think Long Covid is mainly fatigue or brain fog and while that has been part of my Long Covid journey it has also never been the determining factor. Long Covid is not fatigue, Long Covid is pain. I recently sprained my ankle and the doctor at the hospital insisted I’d take some Paracetamol. I didn’t. Yes, it did hurt and for a couple of days I couldn’t walk at all, but it was nothing compared to Long Covid. At least with a sprained ankle you can avoid the pain by not stepping on it… Long Covid is not that kind.
Bloodlust
She smelled of raindrops, desperation and the champagne she had accidentally spilled on her strange garment. She smelled of life and all its pains. Her hands were moist with water and it was glorious. 270 years hidden behind stone the onslaught to his senses was overbearing, yet, he did not dare to touch her, did not dare to give in to temptation. She seemed so fragile as she put the heavy crate with wine glasses on top of three other boxes. With quick footsteps she rushed up the stairs again. It was better this way.
The air in the cellar was still full of dust; the builders had just left this afternoon, others would come to pick up the last stones in the morning. Had it not been for the water damage after the last heavy rain, nobody would have ever opened that wall, nobody would have accidentally freed what had been lurking behind for centuries. He was thirsty for life, thirsty to know, if much had changed during his slumber.
Her scarf had been carelessly thrown on the wooden shelf next to two bags and a jacket. He pushed the fabric to his nose and breathed in: she had been near the river recently, there was some moss clinging to the wool and the wing of a dead mayfly, a splatter of mud at the bottom, so small it was invisible to the eye.
“What are you doing?”
He did not turn around. “I am drinking in your smell.”
She laughed. “You know that is a bit weird, right?”
“Go,” he said.
She did not move and as he turned around he expected her to be frozen in fear, instead her eyes were full of curiosity. “Who are you?” she asked. She seemed different than the humans of his past.
He drank from her wrist that night, three sips she had willingly offered. For such a kindness he let her live, but the thirst for a human life had been awakened. He did not need their blood to survive; he was a vampyre not a monster after all. Yet, their blood was so full of memories and emotions and he had none himself. His mind was just a grey shadow of what had been.
***
The first to disappear was an old scholar, a ripe vintage, rather dry but rich in memories, the happy ones were few and so he drank until he had tasted them all.
The second one was a young girl, a visitor, keen to discover the college’s hidden secrets. Her blood was like summer wine, forbidden fruit, just like the paths she had wandered. The first sip was a delight, the flavour of love and another’s body recently tasted. He drank more than he should and the fruitiness evaporated in the sinfulness of her youth. He had not felt that young in centuries and like the visitor he became more bold, unreasonable and stupidly fearless. He drank her in bright daylight, in the shadow of an arch, just a few steps from where her friends were calling her name. Later he cried. What a waste! She should have lasted longer.
There was one more he drank before anyone became suspicious: the head butler was a heavy man, tall and filled with the delicacies he used to serve the guests. Even for a vampyre he was not easy to overcome, but the smell of pistachio ice cream and dark chocolate sauce was too tempting to resist. He still remembered the Italy of his youth, just reborn, and the pale girl with copper hair he had savoured for weeks. The memory of her taste nearly forgotten, he still remembered the pistachio smell of her skin. Desperate to taste her again he buried his teeth deep in the butler’s neck. Blood splatters on the wall, a torn artery, the man fought back. What a disappointment. The pistachio smell faded with the iron tinge of blood. And instead of his copper haired lover all the vampyre saw were the sad dark eyes of two little girls loosing their father. The butler tasted bitter and sad. The vampyre felt lonely afterwards – and guilty. He never felt guilty. Desperate for something sweet, something tender he lurked in the dark, waiting for victim number four.
That night she returned.
She waited for him where he had seen her last, just awaking from his slumber. She held a basket of strawberries in her hand. “I picked them today,” she said. “I thought you might like to taste them.” She picked a small one, just the right size to fit into her mouth. As she bit down a small drop of juice coated her lower lip. “They are full of sunshine,” she said and opened the top button of her white shirt, her work uniform as he had learned. “It’s precious,” she said. “Don’t spill anything.”
He knew it would hurt and so he traced the vein with his claw-like fingers, tilted her head and brushed her hair aside. “Another one,” he whispered into her ear. And while she bit the fruit, he bit her neck. The taste flooded his senses. He saw her in the garden, the wind playing with her dress while she chose her harvest carefully. She had tasted one then and there. It was for him, he knew. Sun on her skin, fruit on her lips – that was something he would never again experience himself. He took another sip: her naked body under the shower, washing away the dirt underneath her fingernails and the dust from her face, the pollen she didn’t like and two little greenflies that had been hiding in the braids of her hair.
He drank again and finally he was back in the cellar. The taste of strawberries filled his senses and her warm body felt like an eclipse. “ Stop,” he said. “You have to stop or I will kill you.”
“Maybe that is why I am here.”
“No more killing,” he said and licked her wound dry. “You humans have become far too clever for that.”
A functioning police force, forensics, murder investigations – he had tasted the stories in her blood and remembered the times of great plagues and sickness. He would never bite rotten meat and taste poisoned blood, but a drained body was easy to hide between mountains of decaying corpses. In modern times that was no longer an option.
War times had always been a feast for his kind. The vampyre still remembered the doomed king and his parliament in Oxford, the raging battles in the countryside, hunger and starvation hiding his rampage. How glorious the 19th and 20th century must have been for his brothers and sisters while he was in deep slumber behind ancient walls…
Memories were not always sweet: he had held the lovely young courtier in his arms weeping as he drank the last drop of blood. His friends gone, his family divided, and a girl lost to cannon fire. Even after centuries he still tasted the bitterness of the widow who had seen three of her children starve, only a girl of seven left. The widow had offered herself to the hungry beast, so that he might pay for bread for her starving child. He had taken her pain with him and his only consolation was to see the young girl grow into an adult, unspoiled by starvation and war. He had kept his promise until the mother’s blood had faded in his rotten veins and the young woman became just one of the many he yearned to taste. He drank her blood on her wedding night – just enough to remind himself of the sweetness of life, not enough to kill. He left Oxford the next evening, returning 98 years later, only to be buried in the vaults of his old hunting ground. The irony! He had slept through all of it – the bricks and mortar they put in place, the centuries that followed. So tired. Had they known what was hiding behind the wall, what creature they so successfully sealed in? Or had they just been lucky to incarcerate what would have taken their lives, if given the chance?
“Taste it again,” she said. “For me.” He inhaled the chocolate through her blood. It was the fifth evening the girl had come to visit in just one week. Her skin was paler than ever.
“No more,” he said, but she only laughed.
“But you want it. And so do I.”
***
“I brought you something special tonight,” she said the next time she came to him. “You have to taste it from my heart.”
So he punctured a vein on her chest, close to the heart where the blood was fresh, clean and intoxicating, he bit where danger lurked underneath her velvet skin. He tasted him in her blood. She had taken a lover the night before, a warm-blooded scholar with auburn hair and freckled skin. The vampyre tasted the apples and cinnamon on his lips and traced his body with her hands. The memory made him burn with desire and he swallowed again, the thick blood filling his mouth, four drops spilled on his chin. He felt the sheets underneath their bodies and breathed in the rhythm of their joy. Three more sips and the vampyre felt his body shudder in delight. So close! So close to living, feeling, breathing again!
He had stained her yellow dress with bloody tears, holding her body close to his unmoving heart. It took him a while to realise why the familiar body felt so strange in his arms: her steady heartbeat was silenced.
Another one ruined, another one gone. He could no longer bear it and so he poisoned her lips with a gift from his veins.
***
“Hello,” she said to the young girl of 13. “Are you lost? Let me show you the way, my dear. These hallways can be very confusing.”
They found the body three days later floating in the river Cherwell only a few meters from Magdalen Bridge. It had gotten stuck between two punts and the riverbank.
***
“Do you like sweets?”
The little boy nodded.
“What are you having?” she asked with a sugary smile, the blood of the girl still coating her lips like burgundy lipstick.
“Colin Caterpillar,” the boy said and pushed another wine gum between his lips.
“Oh, I love Colin. May I taste one?”
The boy nodded. They found his drained body three months later, stuffed behind wine crates in a far corner of the cellar.
***
She did not like the taste of old people. It reminded her of all the things she would never have. A baby girl, grandchildren, a garden full of flowers and sunshine to watch them play… She rather enjoyed the innocence of the youth she was beginning to forget.
He was barely 19 and had just started studying philosophy this term. She found him in the library between piles of books. The sun had set and he was enraptured with his readings. She was a silent hunter and so his only warning was a breath of wind on his neck just before she tore his throat. His blood soiled the expensive books, one volume dated back to the 17th century – the vampyre would have loved to hold it between his fingers but all his little creation cared for was the thrill of the hunt and being alive again, even if it was just for a few moments as the young scholar’s memories rushed through her brain.
This time she did not even clean away the body.
***
It was enough.
It was enough.
***
The vampyre watched the young woman he had so desperately loved while putting mortar to stone. Another cellar, another prison but this time he was his own jailor. This time he would not be alone. He kissed his sleeping beauty’s lips while he put the last stone in its position. Again underneath layers of Oxford’s century old stones he went to rest, a lover by his side and the memories of the once living trapped inside their veins.
Maybe this time they would be save.
Assembly Rooms Bath
Harcourt Arboretum, Oxfordshire
First Love by Jessica Holzhausen
I dreamed again that you were dead. There was a hole in the ground and a coffin, some white flowers – you never liked white – and people I haven’t seen in 20 years. They still look the same. "It is my fault," I say and my dream-self feels like 16 again. Sometimes I can still recall your smell when someone passes by, a whiff of perfume on the bus. And the smell of perfume mixes with the taste of smoke. And guilt. You planted it there, nourished it, fed it and unlike your letters I can’t put it away in a cardboard box. As the morning light filters through the curtains, I try to chase away the bad dreams with better memories. I made love in your bed for the very first time the perfect, caring kindness the softness, tender kisses and heated embrace I have to recall with…
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A rainy day on Meadfoot Beach
Deleting Eve by Jessica Holzhausen
Pleased to announce that literally stories has published one of my short stories
My client bought model T17 in April 2027 as a – I quote – ‘customizable sex toy with programmable character traits mimicking the behaviour of a real woman’. Mimicking – that is the code word here! Mimicking! The sex robot the prosecution likes to refer to as ‘Eve’ has never ever been a real woman. T17 was an advanced tool that might have looked like a human, acted like one, but only because its programmers and my client’s own adjustments embedded that into its code. Mimicking! My client did not commit murder, he deleted a computer programme he himself created according to standards set by T17’s original programmers. He deleted a computer programme from his own device. My client therefore pleads ‘not guilty’.
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Lungs
Lungs
Sand, paper and dust,
raging fires beneath the surface
a giant’s footstep on the back
black ink dripping down the throat
tears (un-)spilled
and blood longing for air.
Sand, paper and dust,
shredded and broken
a prizefighter’s punch in the chest
lifeless wings unfolding in a storm
shattered lungs
and a breath never taken.
Sand, paper and dust,
crumbled, brittle.
Rust.
Jessica Holzhausen - Writing, Art & History 