Our optimism was ill-founded. I was feeling so ill by Saturday evening that I couldn’t join David, Chrissy and Dot for dinner at The Dining Rooms. Dot herself had been bad but was improving a bit by then and was able to have a good time with them. I managed Sunday lunch at home with them before taking to my bed again.

All very disappointing, but it was lovely to see them both happy despite the unhealthy atmosphere (David himself wasn’t too well, having caught something off the children), and it was great that they could come.

On the Friday I had had to cancel my intended visit to the launch of Godfrey Sayers’ book in Holt, and on Sunday I didn’t make church, of course. On the Monday I missed the PCC, as did Howard, who also had some kind of virus. There’s a lot of it about. Dot heroically attended as St Augustine’s sole representative.

This was a full-blown case of the kind of upper respiratory tract infection that I used to get routinely when I was younger – debilitating in the sense that you can’t do anything involving your head for more than a minute or two: talking to people, reading, watching TV and so on. I haven’t had it like this for years, I don’t think, and hoped I’d grown out of it, as I seem to have more or less grown out of hay fever.

Dot wasn’t feeling at all well either for some days: she gets a lot of catarrh and sneezing, but not quite the acute facial discomfort, I don’t think. Perhaps she’s just more resilient, or more determined. But I don’t think so, obviously.

She was out in the city yesterday, and has been to have lunch with Carrie today. I managed to get up to the Rosary, where there was brief bit of weak sunshine, but I still feel very tired and clogged up. The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, but let it pass. (You have to be a big James Thurber fan to get that one. Unless you happen to click here.)

I should have mentioned that Phil popped round last Friday afternoon for a cup of tea, despite my virus warning. He declined a lift home.