Day 354. The arena of the unwell. (20/12/13)

Those fortunate(?) enough to have heard my appearance reviewing the papers on City Talk's Breakfast show yesterday may have noticed that about halfway through the piece my control of the English language deserted me in a total and complete a manner as one could imagine.

Nerves? Fear? Panic? Stagefright?

None of the above. Nothing, in fact, so interesting. A dry mouth, nothing more. Mick (the presenter) had offered me a cup of tea upon arrival as he had on the previous two occasions. This time I chose to pass and roughly halfway through the third piece, the media's coverage of the death of Ronnie Biggs, cotton wool appeared in my mouth. Tons of the stuff.

And the more I tried to compose myself and recover the ability to use words the worse it got. The more I thought about the fact that it was happening the more it happened. I became ludicrously aware of the presence of my upper set of teeth (the majority of these not being real means that I'm always pretty aware of them anyway, the metal palette ensures that particular joy) and limped my way to the end of the slot.

"That'll teach me to turn down a cup of tea from now on"

But I had no idea why the dryness had appeared in the first place. Until this morning when I woke with the same feeling and realised that I was the latest family member to succumb to 'the lurgie' (strangely, auto correct doesn't like that word - originated in the Goon show IIRC, spelling varies).

Matty had complained over the last couple of days of 'feeling weird' - "weird in what way mate?" "Don't know, just weird"

J had come home from four days in Bradford (not a holiday believe it or not) having spent the last two of those days with some kind of winter vomiting bug which has now settled down to having not eaten for three days and a persistent cough that I'm fairly certain I heard once or twice during the night but may have been dreaming both this and the idea that I should get up and go and sleep on the couch.

So I woke up with heavy burning eyes, a pain behind my right eye socket that has refused to shift all day and the same bloody dryness of mouth that afflicted me yesterday at exactly the moment that I could have done without it kicking in. I have man flu. There are four working days left until Christmas (although the world doesn't feel even vaguely Christmassy at this precise moment), the next week is the busiest week of the year (for one last time), there's illness in the shop and illness at home.

This could be a long old week. Hey, it's December. What else is new?

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