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The first day of the 2023 County Championship season. A time for a fresh start, for hope and excitement, for improvement, and, fingers crossed, a full four days of cricket. My walk to Old Trafford is twenty-five minutes at a leisurely pace, twenty at a scuttle. Today, I take it slow. The sky is clear blue though there’s a definite breeze about. Pavements are drying after overnight rain, the concrete dotted with fallen blossom and magnolia petals, also a stray carrot. I take my usual route: Oswald Road, Kensington and Great Stone, pass the roundabout, the Quadrant pub, and then the still disused former B&Q and onetime Stretford Hardrock. Bar the details of the game – opposition, minor rule tweaks and a change in overseas personnel – much about the day will be as it was twelve months earlier.

There’s the building work, but then it feels as if there’s been building work at the ground since I started coming in 2016 – as with the city of Manchester itself, the home of Lancashire seems in a content state of redevelopment. The hotel extension along Brian Statham Way is almost finished. The rhythmic clanging and squeaking, the echoing of metal upon metal, will give the action an Einstürzende Neubauten soundtrack.

There’s the aforementioned breeze which, unlike Perth’s Fremantle Doctor dispensing relief at the WACA ground, will become a demon gust ripping from Old Trafford’s many crevices.

And then there’s hirsute Surrey captain Rory Burns who doesn’t appear to have been near a barbers anytime this decade.

For anyone reading purely for the cricket, the game went like so: Surrey bat first and make 442, Cameron Steel hits an unbeaten 141 while Kiwi Colin de Grandhomme makes the first of two flying catches – in the 2nd innings he’ll take an even more spectacular effort, running in from the boundary and diving full length before holding on to ball and sunglasses, but not his strides which end up around his knees; Lancs are then dismissed for 291 as the visitor’s Aussie import Sean Abbott takes five wickets. Surrey bat again and declare on 292-6, Ben Foakes not out on 108 and Matt Parkinson bagging a 5-fer as well as a pair of bullseyes – or, perhaps, ballseyes – into the nether regions of Steel and Jordan Clark; on the final day, Lancs bat through with a Josh Bohannon century hit off Ollie Pope’s first-class bowling debut. Even Rory Burns gets in a few late overs including a final ball delivered prior to shaking hands on a draw, his hair down and flowing, his pace one I’m going to insist on describing as medium dry.

With that out of the way let’s go back to April 2022 and Lancashire’s opening home fixture against Gloucestershire. I’d arrived in much the same way as above, though at a scuttle and, as far as I remember, minus the pavement carrot. The day was a fine one. The building work had completed its demolition stage, the Red Rose suite gone and replaced by dirt mounds and mechanical diggers.

In the morning session it was all about the bat with lunch reached and Gloucestershire 101 for no loss. But in the afternoon all changed. The visitor’s first wicket went on 119 and by the time the scoreboard read 150 they were six down. How much of this I saw is another matter. Sometime after the break I received a text from my girlfriend. She’d had a slight cough and felt a bit tired when waking though neither of us had thought much on it. But partway through the day she’d felt shivery and done a Covid test, which came up positive.

How did I feel? My nose was a little runny, my throat a little sore and I had a headache. All of which I would normally have put down to my pollen allergy. I went home, took a test, and I also had Covid. I called my employer and went sick. As I’d continued to go into work throughout the pandemic, we had done well to make it this far without infection. But then we’d been careful. We were vaccinated, we’d worn masks. We were not out shaking hands with strangers.

But anyway, here it was and for several days my girlfriend barely got out of bed, while my headache came and went and came and went. Less than a week later I started to notice strange sensations. There was a pulsing in my body, a feeling of having just exerted myself and waiting for my heart rate to return to normal along with heavy, heavy tinnitus. I assumed this would all calm as I recovered. Three days later, however, I was in Wythenshawe accident & emergency.

I’d woken in the night to get a drink of water, but never got that far, collapsing and losing consciousness. I don’t know how long I was out for but when my eyes opened the first thing I did was try to stand. The ambulance driver later told me this was a common mistake, many rushing to do the same and receiving a further trip to the floor, which is exactly what happened with me. I came round for a second time on the other side of the room, my vision spinning and a pain in my back.

After almost seven hours in A&E, I was discharged having had blood tests, an ECG, X-ray, and brain scan. All appeared normal beyond the sore ribs from my second fall. A consultant told me there was still much they didn’t know about what the virus does to the body. Over the next few weeks my ribs healed but the rest of me seemed to go in the opposite direction. Muscle spasms and a constant tremor made me clumsy, my entire body would shake in the night. There were heart palpitations and a tingling all over. For the first time since childhood asthma became a problem, and my neck and throat tightened as if I was being gently throttled, leading to issues swallowing and an aversion to T-shirts which ruled out most of my wardrobe. As for my brain, a whole host of cognitive troubles began.

My memory was erratic, thoughts slipping from my mind in seconds. Mid conversation I would lose where I was up to or the word I wanted to say next. Watching sport was out as trying to follow the players and ball on screen was tiring. Reading was impossible, my tremor meant that the book in my hands was never still while my eyes couldn’t focus on a single line of text. I was seeing clumps. I became sensitive to noise. Car alarms, van engines idling, the TV of the flat above; all felt as if they were drilling into my skull. I couldn’t even stand to listen to music, and as someone whose tastes skew to the more abrasive end of the spectrum – Sex Pistols, Sonic Youth, Sabbath – this was quite a change. For reference, even Paul McCartney’s Glastonbury set proved beyond me.

Outside I struggled to make it to the end of the street. I’d developed a dizzying disconnect between brain and limbs, coupled with a weird sensory overload like something from the pages of a comic. Busy environments proved difficult as I saw everything, heard everything, felt everything. But while Clark Kent could make a quick change into Superman and fly off to save the world, I could barely make it to the Co-op.

My doctor told me most people were fine again within twelve weeks, and around July, I started a rehab course. Three months after leaving Old Trafford in April I was back at the ground for Lancashire v Kent, though managed just two sessions. The movement on the field and the construction sounds off it were still too much.

In August, I returned to work but while some symptoms had calmed, others remained. The anxiety, the tremors, the trailing off mid-sentence and hyper awareness. Over the next few months, I tried to act normally. I made it to the first day of an England v South Africa Test match, and a friend’s wedding, I turned forty-five and attended a couple of gigs – Bob Dylan and Anthrax – had a night or two out with mates, and took a trip to York with my girlfriend. Things had improved but I still was not me. Every one of these actions took far more of a toll than before.

With each new doctor appointment and test result, I’d hoped a magic wand could be waved and all would be rest. But no, GP investigations exhausted, I was referred on to the long Covid clinic, and while waiting settled into a routine mainly involving getting myself to work and back and then recovering. In late-November 2022, however, came the redux.

The first sign all was not well was in my hands. I would wake in the night and find the right one was completely numb. Then it would happen in my left. Sometimes I would even feel it begin to happen in the day. I thought it might be temperature related as a cold snap had just begun, and carried on with life. Then, on my way to work one day in early December I’d almost reached the tram stop when I started having a problem with my feet. It was that same disconnect between brain and limbs from in the summer. I turned back for home and in the weeks following every previous symptom began to rear up once more. The shaking, the cognitive problems, the sensory issues, tightness in my throat and sensitivity to noise. My breathing became a near constant wheeze. I was back in the grips of long Covid and once more on the sick.

Had I caught the virus again? Maybe. I took a couple of tests, the first of which my addled brain made a complete mess of by applying the solution to the wrong end. The result of the second came up as invalid, which as a statement on my condition I found a little too on the nose.

Fast forward to April 2023. The first day of the County Championship season. A time for a fresh start, for hope and excitement, for improvement, and, fingers crossed, a full four days of cricket. After having another chunk of time wiped out, I’m due to return to work next week and this is my dress rehearsal for being in the world.

On the first day I leave the ground early, but at least for a good reason. I’ve an appointment with a therapist as part of the recommendations from the long Covid clinic I attended in late January. Coupled with medication – Citalopram – the talking therapy is to try and calm my mind and body and give me coping strategies for the anxiety, which along with regular breathing exercises does seem to be helping. The benefits of the medication have so far been subtle and not the speedy solution I’d wished for, magic wands not being all that common outside wizarding fiction.

For my asthma, the Seretide I take has been doubled as I wait for a pulmonary function test on my lungs. My breathing does seem more under control and I even make it up the countless steps to the top of Stand C on the second afternoon.

But I’m still on edge and shaky and ridiculously clumsy, and how my mobile phone stills functions and has an uncracked screen is a miracle bearing in mind how often I’ve dropped it over the past twelve months. Whether it’s the tremor or a problem with hand-eye coordination causing this, I don’t know, but can only marvel at the device’s durability. As for noise, the construction clanging is an issue and I do have to sit in the less populated blocks as hearing multiple conversations can still overwhelm my brain while the sound of applause is like being slapped over both ears.

My pace for everything now doesn’t even approach Rory Burns’ medium dry – sudden movements can bring disorientating spikes in my heart rate – and on the final morning the walk to Old Trafford is a particularly slow one. I feel a sense of weariness, but overall am in the same position as the last time I went back to work. Better though not truly better. I’ve managed all four days, which is already more than I did in the whole of 2022, and my tangle with long Covid is ongoing, but, like this game, a stalemate, which isn’t a bad way to begin the season. I’m hoping this can be a fresh start, an improvement, and, fingers crossed, a less troublesome year.