the reluctant invalid

The Systems Administrator had rallied enough by the middle of yesterday to go and buy fresh supplies of milk, firelighters, biscuits and cat food.  I sat in front of the wood burning stove, and saw in the Guardian that Carrie Fisher had died.  I have tried to remain positive towards 2016 in the face of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the general death-of-the-stars tide of doom that has been dragging down the prevailing mood, or at least the mood among my friends who on the whole do not seem in favour of Brexit or Trump or the sad early demise of Alan Rickman and David Bowie and Victoria Wood.  But it is beginning to feel like hard work.

Fortunately I do not have anything in my diary until 17 January, and that's an AGM which while I ought to attend it if I can, I am not on the committee and it won't cost me anything if I can't. Otherwise, no concert tickets, no exhibition slots booked, no arrangements to meet anybody.  This is partly by design because as I was feeling under the weather in December I held off making any more arrangements on the basis that when you're in a hole, stop digging.  It is also down to sheer good luck that the things we wanted to see at the Mercury theatre and the Arts Centre weren't on until February.

I had hoped to get to Dulwich before the current exhibition of a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter ends on 15 January, but once I didn't manage to go before Christmas I had a dark suspicion I might not make it at all.  At least I don't have to decide whether come next week I am fit to drag myself into the Plant Centre.  Or the City.  It could be much worse.  As it is all I have to do is sit in front of the stove and try not to think about the garden.  I haven't done any work in the garden since 7 December.

The NHS website is infuriatingly vague about the recovery time for flu, saying that most people feel much better within a week but full recovery can take significantly longer.  Well, I do feel much better than I did in the middle of last week, I don't have a temperature and a screaming headache, but how long is significantly long?  A week?  Two weeks?  Longer than until 15 January, which in practice means 13 January because we have no trains at weekends?

The SA always tells me that he can tell I am starting to get better when I begin to grumble.  It is when I am really meek and quiet that he worries.  On that basis I am starting to get better.  But ye gods, this is such a waste of time.  Look at Alan Rickman and Victoria Wood.  Who can say how much of that we all have left?