there really is a lot of it about

By the middle of last week the Systems Administrator was over the bug enough to haul and chop several loads of firewood and make a start clearing out the unwanted tangle of climbers from under the veranda.  I, meanwhile, after my day in the garden, began to feel unnaturally chilly and then hot and clammy by turns.  It was either the bug coming back for another bite, or a new and unwelcome hormonal development in my career as a middle aged lady.

Feeling so much better the SA spent Saturday at a long-planned day at the races, returning the next morning bright eyed and bushy tailed, except that during Sunday evening he began to mutter that he felt hot and shivery, before tottering up to bed uncharacteristically early and barely after what would count as grownup's bedtime, the point at which it is OK to disappear up to bed without appearing antisocial.  This morning the SA rallied enough to go to the supermarket, but suddenly began to feel very hot and sticky in the queue for the checkout.

At lunchtime the phone rang, and it was the SA's oldest brother with an oddly familiar tale.  He'd meant to ring us at Christmas, but after just about making it through most of Christmas Day he had gone down with a cold and chest infection that put him in bed and then hung around for three weeks.  By the middle of last week he was feeling better, enjoyed a day on the golf course, and found himself back to square one and back in bed with a tight chest and the shivers.

I was so disheartened by my second relapse that I spent the following three days sitting still in the warm, going outside only to see to the chickens, and pulling my layers of fleece on and off according to whether I felt hot or cold.  This afternoon I decided I was probably fit to attend the garden club committee meeting and that I ought to go, as it was my first one since being installed as treasurer.  I managed to drive there and back and make it through the whole meeting without once feeling hot or cold.

I was very relieved.  In fact, I was rather relieved when the SA began to complain of feeling hot and cold and sticky, since if we both had it that made my symptoms more likely to be a bug.  It's not that I was glad the SA was ill, but with a bug, even a nasty lingering one, there is the prospect of it being gone in a few weeks.  Proper hot flushes could go on for years.