The Nasal Intruder.

Had a Covid test this morning at the Ulster University campus. It was a catalogue of the usual shameful social horrors - how I've not missed meeting people. 

As I arrived at the entrance my umbrella blew inside out. I couldn't work the door into the building and the security guard inside helpfully assisted my ingress from the opposite side of his newspaper. Once inside I was asked to point my phone at a QR Code, which my phone couldn't read, so we had to do the entire transaction manually. The young woman processing me was helpful and professional, but even she allowed herself an eye-roll when I couldn't remember my phone number, and couldn't read it from my phone because I had my wrong glasses on. It was the sort of learned helplessness act that aging thesps pull off to make them seem charming and otherworldly. ("Bless you for helping me - I never really got on with the new money, you know.")

In reality, it's a pain in the arse, and I felt like a total idiot. These days I like to plan for every eventuality, because my thinking-on-my-feet skills are non-existent, and my defence against the unrelenting chaos of the world is to know where all the exits are. I was wrong-footed here. I was also wrong-footed by the test itself. 

"You need to rub your tonsils five times each with this cotton bud."

"Right."

"And then you need to stick it up your nose ten times."

"Is that ten times each in nostril?"

"No." I was being ludicrous, clearly. "Just five times up each nostril."

"With the same swab I've been tickling my tonsils with?"

"Of course."

"Right."

"Let me know if you need any help."

"Right."

It's not the first time I've sat alone in a cubicle making retching noises, but it is the first time I've done it without the blurry memory of a well enjoyed evening making it worthwhile. Frankly, I thought I had a better gag reflex than this - it feels like a door slamming on another career opportunity. 

I'm in a room, heaving as quietly as I can as a q-tip nudges my gullet, because I want the girl outside, who is about twenty, to think I have a manly, leathery throat. When will this end? We're both wearing masks in an empty university on a Bank Holiday Monday, in a rainstorm. She's guiding me through a perfunctory medical procedure, and I'm still trying to look cool. "Wow! That guy had a throat like Bob Dylan's snakeskin boot - he's so dreamy!" Ridiculous buffoon. 

I left wet-eyed, and choking, and assuming that I'd cocked it all up. I hadn't, in fact. I got the negative result in less than an hour. It all worked remarkably well, even with my involvement in the scenario. 

And that was great news because it meant I'm good to go - I'm covid compliant, baby. I'm able to head down to Coleraine tomorrow, pick up my jodhpurs and megaphone, and direct the first of five short films I've written. People ask me if I'm nervous. They're asking quite often, in fact. To the point that I'm wondering if I should, perhaps, be more nervous. Am I not, in fact, nervous enough? 

But no, I'm not nervous. I'm working with an amazing actor, and great photographer and the producer is very detail focused. More even than I am. The scripts are funny and sad and jubilant, and the rehearsals have been life-affirming. I'm really looking forward to it, and the proof, if proof be needed, is I'll stick anything up my nose in order to make this film. 

Though that really sounds like Hollywood in the seventies.