Tag Archives: urti

Braving our unhealthy atmosphere

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David and Chrissy outside Number 22

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.

Queen Dot, approximately

Lovely picture of Dot taken by the head teacher at Little Plumstead school. Yes, that is a pine cone on her head. Don’t ask.

That was a rough week, bringing with it the return of the dreaded upper respiratory tract infection, which caused me so much grief in my younger years. Thought it had gone for good, but it all came back again with the usual unpleasant symptoms, and I was in bed for three days with everything streaming. In essence I think it was the virus Dot had (and she had it bad enough) but it seems to debilitate me completely. I am now feeling OK, though rather tired, and a little clogged up. Dot still hasn’t got rid of her cough.

I missed leading the service and the visit to Oxnead Hall on Sunday, and a meeting at the Norfolk Record Office and the Launch of 26 in Norwich (Paston connection) on Monday, all of which was disappointing. Dot went to Oxnead, Phil took the service, and Rob went to NRO (which he would have done anyway).

While the virus was getting into me, and before it reached its three-day apex, I went with Dot to Judy’s for supper on Thursday – lovely fish pie and Eton mess, amusing cat – and paid a misguided, fleeting visit to Welborne Arts Festival on Saturday while Dot was visiting Auntie Ethel in hospital (yes, she’s still there – Ethel, not Dot). The weather was chill and coming on to rain, but I had a brief chat with organiser Mike and, unexpectedly, top artist Kate Coleman, who had a small tentful of paintings. Then I ran for the hills, getting back to the hospital just in time to give Dot a lift home.

That reminds me, I ‘ve written a new song called The Rolling Hills of Pakefield, which I like quite a lot.

I’ve spent the last couple of days completing preparations for Sunday (though I made a brief foray into town today to pay in cheques and buy paper). An unexpected complication – and I realise I’m looking at this from completely the wrong point of view – is that our friend and church member Geoff Saunders is on the critical list in Papworth following an operation to replace his aorta. Nicholas rang, concerned that my leading of the service on Sunday would be affected if he dies, and it certainly would, but I think I could cope. Hope I don’t have to, of course. (Nicholas himself is leading a Developing Consciousness course at St Luke’s and so can’t step in.)

Half a dozen of us had a prayer meeting at St Luke’s yesterday during the operation.