Situation normal?

Tuesday evening was decision time.  I felt bloody awful and I had to consider whether I was going to stick to my oft repeated but rarely followed advice to myself that, “if you are ill – stay away from school.”

The last time I struggled in, I was asked to do extra – and I think that decided it for the next time!

My throat felt as if it had been churned up by an industrial cultivator, while I was convinced that my lungs had been filled with reinforced concrete and my racking cough was enough to satisfy the most demanding Grand Inquisitor.  In short I felt like shit.

But that was nothing to what I felt like the next day.  My throat had reached new levels of awfulness and I got up (ironically at my usual time for rising) and made myself a cup of honey and lemon in pure self-defence.  It all honesty it was a lifesaver, it actually did what old wives constantly tell you it will do and it soothed.

I cannot truthfully say that I enjoyed my first day off for some time and even reading failed to do its accustomed magic for me.  By the time I was due to go to the doctor for my appointment at six in the evening, made at nine in the morning, I was feeling worse.  And worse.

The doctor signed me off until Friday and so I have these days plus to weekend to get better.

Yesterday I went to bed early and stayed there until lunchtime today.  The only reason I got up was to go back to the doctor to get the “alta” – the second piece of paper that I need to give to my school to explain and justify my absence.

Since then I have been sitting in my chair and coughing quietly (and extravagantly from time to time) and contemplating the horror of going back, where, on the Monday we have an extra meeting after school.  Bienvenidos!

My paltry attempts at reading have benefited from the rubbish that you can access in electronic form.  I am still trying to recover from a dreadfully adolescent screed called “The Lost Boys” written probably by two female adolescents with a faulty grasp of some of the details of English grammar and/or typing.  But I read it all, god help me, and I still don’t know why – except I do tend to read the books I start (with the signal exceptions of “The Sound and the Fury” and “The Golden Bowl”, though I should probably try them both again. Some year or other) which means that I have read some real rubbish in my time.

The books that are readily available in e-format are sci-fi and fantasy: both hit weak spots in my otherwise reasonably snobbish literary judgement.  Previously I limited my exposure to such perniciously addictive pulp writing by limiting my purchases to second hand copies of books by named writers under a certain price.  But technology and the Internet combine to bring an almost unlimited supply of wordy drugs to my fingertips. 

Life can be cruel sometimes!

Tomorrow must be concentrated on getting better – so that I can enjoy the weekend, as preparation for the return to the daily grind.