A few weeks ago, we reported how the Vice Chairman of Southern Counties Eastern Football League John Moules had contracted Coronavirus.

Thankfully, John has now recovered and is out of hospital, and in his first interview since his discharge, he wants to thank the staff at Darenth Valley Hospital for the care that helped him on the road to recovery and to try and warn the rest of us as to the effects of catching the virus.

He told us, “The first few days were very scary, but once you go in hospital and you see how these wonderful people in the NHS work, they do reassure you and give you the best treatments – I’ve got no complaints; I’m a lucky person!”

To many of us, actually knowing someone who has caught the disease brings the whole pandemic that frighteningly bit closer – a fact that John agrees with, “I accept that,” he said.

“I know exactly when I caught it – I volunteer once a week at Woolwich Crown Court looking after witnesses and five of us caught the virus on the same day.”

“That was on the Thursday and on the Saturday, I had an ambulance come out to check me out and they said that they would leave it a couple of days to see how I got on.”

“But by the Monday I was in a real bad way and they came along and took me into Intensive Care for five days!”

“The worst thing is of course is that you can’t have any visitors and you can only stay in communication via mobile phone. But sometimes I was sleeping up to five or six hours a day.”

“You’re awake about six o’clock in the morning after they’ve been checking you for blood pressure and temperature and everything else two or three times overnight.”

“I didn’t eat for twelve days actually when I first caught this as I had no appetite at all – you’re just totally lethargic and to describe it in one word, it knocks the stuffing out of you!”

“I don’t think people realise how bad it is when you get the disease. I think that that’s the key thing to it – it knocks you sideways, it really does! Being on oxygen for two or three days brings it home to you as well because my breathing was terrible!”

“I can’t thank everybody enough for the messages that I received because when you’re in shall I say, a dark corner and you get those kinds of messages they really do give you a boost.”

“I can’t thank the football world for all the messages I received – they were wonderful! I received messages from people I knew forty or fifty years ago, suddenly they were sending me messages and that really brings it home to you how small this world is at times.”

“It’s a slow road to recovery as I said before, it really does knock the stuff out of you – it takes all your energy away! I’m recovering slowly, I’m doing everything slowly, I’m not going to rush, I’m going to do everything at the right pace to get back to full fitness.”

“I’ve been out in my car once in the last four weeks and that was a brief drive to get out of the house but that’s it. I’ve been in the rest of the time…”