Yesterday the UK government belatedly realised that anosmia — the loss of taste and smell — is an indicator for the Covid-19 coronavirus. This has been recognised by the World Health Organisation and other European countries for some months now.

I suffered from anosmia for a year directly after a ’flu jab in September 2014. Coronavirus is related to influenza. Why did professionals not make the connection? Here are notes from my diary:

SEPTEMBER 2014
Completely lost my sense of taste and smell shortly after my old folks’ free NHS ’flu jab. Medical health professionals tell me it cannot have had anything to do with the ’flu jab, and that I must have had a knock on the head.

OCTOBER 2014
Drove back from the Frankfurt Book Fair with Shatzkin as usual. I realised, as I gazed at the sumptuous lunch laid out in front of me by Alex Hanbuckers at De Herborist in the flat farmland outside Bruges, that I couldn’t smell or taste a thing. What a waste.

DECEMBER 2014
Still no sense of taste and smell. Between now and my ENT appointment we have the remains of the Christmas goose and a trip to Paris scheduled for Von’s birthday. I might as well suck wet cardboard. Von had a 2000 Ch. Grand Puy Ducasse for Christmas lunch, but it would have been wasted on me, so I had Plonco d’España instead. I was allowed one sip of her claret; of course I couldn’t taste a thing but the feel of her wine in my mouth was exquisite, completely different from the abrasive attack of the plonco.

SEPTEMBER 2015
After a year’s course of prescribed Flixonase nasule (sic) drops and stertorous sniffing of a home-made salt and boracic acid swill, my sense of taste and smell gradually returned in fits and starts round September. That was a year spent without it, a year lost for a gourmand like me.

It must have been caused by the ’flu jab. It cannot have been anything else. So I guess I must be immune now.

To the restaurants!