Ill
since New Year’s Day. Influenza. I had the jag. Back in November.
The pretty nurse said “That’ll protect you from the main strain.”
“How many strains are there, then?” I enquired. “Forty-nine.”
I felt like I’d contracted the other forty-eight whilst missing the
one for which I had the jag in the first place. Coughing, sneezing,
sweating, freezing, every joint and muscle aching like fury. The
news came on. “Beware the Australian flu, it’s a killer.” Add
New Zealand and Tasmania to that and that’s the flu I had. I’m
not dead, yet. Now comes the feeble recovery. Every day a little bit
better, a little bit stronger. The weather hasn’t helped. Freezing
cold one day and furiously windy the next.
I drew a book from the
library. I had to do something whilst recovering. I’m hardly
capable of turning the pages unaided. It’s a travel book. I like
travel books. You can imagine yourself in all manner of exotic places
without leaving your armchair, and you don’t need to pay
seventy-six smackers for a passport. This book’s by a middle-aged
woman who sold her house in the north of England and bought a
twin-hulled catamaran and floated round the Mediterranean islands for
year, husband in tow. The book concerned their decision to sail
across the north Atlantic to the Caribbean. Looking out of the window
at the gloom and in my decrepit state, I envied them their freedom
and spirit of adventure, and wished I could do something similar,
until I reminded myself that I’d never ventured out onto the water
any further than the stretch of the River Tyne covered by the North
Shields ferry. I read on. The author kept writing that they’d
‘dinghied along to the quay.’ I can’t stand the lazy use of
nouns as verbs so I threw the book down.
There’s always the
television, of course. A hundred channels and nothing worth watching
on any of them. Then there’s the endless round of advertisements
for stairlifts, electric mobility scooters, funeral services and life
insurance, guaranteed to make you feel old before your time.
In my
desperation to do something creative, I painted a picture, a
watercolour of a nice bosky dell from a photograph I had. When I had
finished, I threw the daub straight in the bin. It looked like a
nuclear explosion imagined by a five-year-old who had just picked up
a brush for the first time. Where the purple sky and orange fields had
come from, I had no idea.
Today I look forward to my dish of
Scotch broth for lunch, bubbling away in a pan in the kitchen. That
might aid my recovery. The wind has rearranged the bunting in the
garden, which I put hung between two mighty trees simply to add a
little bit of colour to the drab browns and greens. I normally have
to put it right every day because the wind always seems to be blowing
here.
The tennis secretary rang me just now. “What are we doing
for the Haddington 700?” he asked. It’s either 700 years this
year since Haddington gained its Royal Charter or it’s 700 years
since the first sod was turned and the first house built. It’s a
big thing hereabouts and each sports club has been asked to do
something worthwhile for the event. “I’m doing nothing,” I
said. “I’m ill.”
“I thought you might want to write a piece
about Samuel Smiles.”
“Smiles? He had nothing to do with
tennis. He wrote self-help books.”
“I know, but we have been
asked to contribute something of a general nature. He is Haddington’s
most famous son, you know.”
“Come back to me in a fortnight and
I’ll tell you whether or not I’m fit enough to write. In the
meantime, put me down to bake some scones.”
Life goes on here,
drearily as ever.
