On Day Zero, I arrive at the ‘managed quarantine facility’, from India, a country on the UK government’s Covid-19 ‘red list’. By law, those arriving from a country on the red list must pay and quarantine for ten days in a government approved hotel or other facility.
It has taken an hour for the bus to arrive from the airport to the adjacent hotel; we had been waiting obediently for the bus to find a driver willing to deliver us. After a brisk check-in, we are escorted to our rooms by a security guard; we are now not allowed to leave our rooms unless it is for a brief walk. A security guard sits at the end of the dimly lit corridor tasked with enforcing this rule. It is late afternoon and I fall asleep exhausted from the journey.
The next morning (Day One), a knock at the door at 7.30 am signals the arrival of breakfast. A brown bag is left outside three times a day with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Today’s breakfast is an apple, an individual box of crunchy nut, a small carton of apple juice (made from concentrate), and American pancakes with a teaspoon of strawberry compote. This is breakfast for the next ten days, although with a variation on the ‘hot option’, which sadly, is never hot; sometimes lukewarm, usually cold. The American pancakes are substituted with muffins, doughnuts or another sugary alternative. The 70 grams of sugar served for breakfast is twice the government’s recommended daily allowance for adults; perhaps the chef had calculated other nutritional benefits in the ‘balanced menu’, proudly designed for our confinement, although it is difficult to identify what these may be.
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