Following a series of posts tackling the major issues of the day to surprising critical acclaim (though, if I’m honest, any degree of critical acclaim is pretty surprising), today I return (unashamedly) to the domestic front.
The author once again find himself subject to the all-too-common cold: that’s the second one in a month! Normally, my physical health is pretty solid (in marked contrast to its mental counterpart) and I only fall victim once a year. This time, there is a rather obvious smoking gun in the form of the vast quantities of germ-ridden youngsters that shared my personal space last Tuesday. I think if I start uncling on a regular basis I may need to take more serious precautions: a mask, gloves and a supply of disinfectant should cover most eventualities (and may have the useful side-effect of prompting the kiddiewinks to give me a wider berth).
Anyway, as I live alone there is little point moping around the house, sighing and looking pathetic as there is precious little obvious sympathy to be extracted from an orchid (which is by far the largest of my house-mates by size). Nor should you, dear reader, view this post as an appeal for a sympathetic response to this debilitating bout of the man ‘flu – no, it only exists at all as a result of the wizard title that came to me as I was mooching around Waitrose in search of victuals to form the basis of the next few days of comfort eating. You will be pleased to know I managed to obtain suitable nourishment, and in particular, chillies: I’m a big believer in the curative (or at least placebo) powers of hot food on the unwell – both in the sense of serving (or, as it has been known since the Budget, taxable) temperature and on the Scoville scale.
As a brief aside, on my way to the middle-classes’ supermarket of choice, I passed a car with what I felt was an inappropriate number plate. The car was a large black Rolls Royce, one of the very modern, equally ugly type rather than anything more classic or attractive (in fact, it might even have been a Bentley as I’m quite rusty on my Eye-Spy Book of Ludicrously Expensive Cars) but it bore the plate: NHS 9. Presumably the owner has the initials NHS or perhaps a loved one had been saved by a public hospital and this was his attempt at a tribute; I’m not sure why I should object, I suppose I just wanted some sort of nominative determinism for vehicles. Ho hum…
Anyway, the choice of title does not just reflect the second cold and the tendency to sneeze, oh no, it goes far deeper. This second cold began at the same time as the last (the wee small hours of Friday morn) and I have subsequently had exactly the same errands to run on both Friday and today. Once again, I spent this morning working both in and on the garden – today more pruning and the planting of my first crop of 2012, the spuds (Rocket, since you ask) – and then had an afternoon trip to buy food while I was still fit enough to cycle (as I’d hate to use the car for such a frivolous reason – and it’s already been out this month to buy large quantities of peat-free compost). The symptoms are also following exactly the same course at the same pace as last time. It is all rather spooky – it’s as though the author of my life has run out of new ideas and is just recycling old ones in the hope I won’t notice. Ha! I have noticed! I think it’s time go all Alan Sugar on the incumbent and recruit a new auteur to start scripting my existence – if we are all very lucky, it might lead to an improvement in the quality (or at least the range of subject matter) of future posts.
Glimpses of a disturbed mind 