My daughter says it’s uncool to get Covid now. So, naturally, I got the dreaded second red line

After two years and five jabs, I finally caught coronavirus on holiday in south Wales. But despite my fevered state, I learned something new

After two jabs in a vaccine trial, and three Pfizers, I was sure my defences were rock solid, impregnable. Turns out they were unbreachable only in the sense that the Maginot line was unbreachable. Like Axis forces in 1940, the subvariant of the Omicron variant - or whatever they're saying it is - found a way around the undefended flanks of my antibodies. Yes, I finally got Covid. Yes, I know, yawn. As my elder daughter said to me: It's so uncool to get Covid now." I was in south Wales with her and our dog when I got my first-ever second red line. Feeling decidedly awful, I took to my bed. You're being very 2020 about this," she said. Not long after, she packed her bag and buggered off to leave me to it, all alone but for the dog.

Thence began 10 days of drifting between sleeping and waking states. I had a raging temperature and a cough like my late Aunt Vesna's in Zagreb when she was smoking at least three packs a day. I woozily remembered her fondly while snatching bits of sleep between death rattles. I wouldn't have got out of bed at all were it not for the needs of the dog, who, when requiring attention, would lick my face, or any other extremity poking out from beneath the sheets. He would lie around bored to tears until another round of vicious coughing started up, at which point he would slope off elsewhere. As I drifted back to sleep, I imagined him lying on the floor with his big paws over his ears, desolate with the tedium of it all.

Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist