Sunday 7 July 2013

past the worst

When I woke up this morning I realised that I felt slightly better.  That wasn't saying a lot, but after more than forty eight hours of aching all over, suffering a constant headache, and an inability either to stay awake or to sleep for more than three hours at a time, there was a slight improvement.  I ached a bit, and the headache was reduced to a dull intimation that I might get a headache later.  As far as I could tell I no longer had a temperature, but I didn't feel strongly enough about the question to start looking for the thermometer.  For lay purposes, healthy adults only exist in three temperature ranges, normal, a bit hot, and frighteningly hot, and I'd never reached stage three.  The Systems Administrator did, last summer, but I didn't need a thermometer to tell the difference.

It was very welcome to have a shower, given that the last time I took one of those was on Thursday morning, and since then I'd spent a full day in the garden, including spreading 6X (stinkies) on the dahlia bed, and two full days running a temperature on the hottest days of the year.  I walked downstairs, concentrating very carefully, and made some tea, and ate some muesli, which seemed to go down pretty well after two days sustained by a piece of toast, a bowl of yogurt, two glasses of apple juice and some packets of mini-cheddars.  The mini-cheddars were the Systems Administrator's offering, based on years' experience of North Sea crossings.  They are dry, savoury, pack quite a few calories for the effort of eating them, and tend to stay down even when you're not in the mood for food.

I'd heard the SA, who had decamped to the spare room for the duration, get up to let the chickens into their run and then go back to bed.  As I sat at the kitchen table drinking tea the SA appeared wrapped in a dressing gown, looking doleful and saying that he too seemed to be going down with the bug, and would have a turn with the bed if I'd finished with it.  This was not a total surprise, since the SA was quizzing me yesterday about the onset of my symptoms, and after a while I grasped that this was not to check on Google in case I had anything really serious, but to compare with the SA's own state of aches and snuffles.  However, after another couple of hours the SA got up again, announcing that the headache had now passed and the SA no longer felt wobbly and maybe didn't have what I had.

And that's it.  Today I am not attempting to do anything, except shuffle between the sofa and my steamer chair on the verandah, with occasional expeditions to the kitchen, and they're quite tiring enough.  It is a sad waste of a lovely day, like yesterday and the day before were.  We were going to get the train up to Norwich today, to see the Bishop's garden and Will Giles' Exotic Garden, which both have fairly limited opening times.  We had it all planned out, to get an early lunch in a nice pub by the river so as to be through the gates of the Bishop's garden when it opened at one, then go on to the Exotic Garden, which doesn't open until two and serves very good cake.  Not a hope.  I couldn't walk as far as the postbox, and if I tried to eat a piece of cake I'd probably be sick.  Today is the last theoretical day for inspecting the bees, ten days since the last one, and I had been planning to do them on Friday, but I'll have to take a chance with them swarming, unless I rally remarkably this afternoon.  Which seems unlikely, given how viral infections normally go through the day, and is why I'm typing this now.

Enjoy the nice weather.

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