To my absolute horror, the nearest Covid test site to Notting Hill is Newport

When Lola gets a cough, Charlotte Cripps is sent on a wild goose chase to get her tested for Covid

(Illustration by Amara May)

It’s alright if your child goes to Eton where they have stockpiled privately purchased Covid tests to use on staff and pupils on their first day of term – and whenever needed – but what about the rest of us? Lola doesn’t have access to the Samba II at her state school – a rapid Covid-19 testing machine that a yummy mummy friend tells me has been installed at her daughter Aurora’s posh boarding school, Benenden, in Kent. 

The elite school has purchased it for £35,000 and it allows everyone in the school to be diagnosed on site with speedy results in 90 minutes. In my case, I spent 90 minutes on hold to 119, just to ask how the hell I get her tested?  Lola has got a cough like every other reception child in the country. But I can’t ignore it – despite the fact she has no temperature. Every single parent is dreading this moment. I have to test her. 

But to my absolute horror, the nearest testing site to Notting Hill with available slots is 137 miles away in Newport. Isn’t that in Wales? That can’t be right.  I get through to an advisor at the coronavirus testing contact centre. He confirms that Newport is the closest to me but now even those slots have gone.  “But what about Bristol airport?" I say in a moment of desperation. “It said there were five slots?”