Part 2
Spring 2018.
My car isn't fixed yet. Something mysterious is happening to the battery, and it won't hold a charge longer than 24 hours. The mechanic is still puzzling over it and that means everywhere I go is on "Shank's Pony". That doesn't bother me much. Feet are reliable and don't require batteries.
I told him to put a new one in and be done with it. But that mechanic is overworked and they are shorthanded, so I am looking at another week before the car is returned to me.
I am used to walking for miles, and have been all of my life. When I was four and five years old I remember my Dad saying "Let's blow the cobwebs away!" and taking me for long walks on the Pennines in Derbyshire. I never complained, never threw a tantrum and demanded to be piggy-backed. I just loved it; the outdoors, the wind and weather, the endless rugged landscapes up there. I often imagined cobwebs blowing in long strands from my hair.
But back to Spring 2018.... The snow has gone. The online grocery delivery sent me seriously unripe apples, and no eggs. They do that randomly with no explanation. Sometimes online deliveries work perfectly, and sometimes (especally when I have no car!) -they don't.
I walk three miles to a nearby village where there is a little table outside a house, with eggs from Happy Hens. That's a nice place, as customers can see the hens in their clean large run, and they do truly look healthy and happy. There is no British Lion mark on these eggs and no telling how old they may be, but they cook like fresh-laid and are always tasty with golden yolks.
But now I have no fruit for breakfast, so on the Sunday decide to walk five miles to the garage-store to pick up some oranges. It's a warm early Spring day and on the walk I am soon drenched with an unusual sweat. My clothes become soaked. It doesn't worry me too much, as I will keep moving except for a brief stop in the store, so won't get chilled.
The store is empty. I pick up four oranges, chocolate biscuits, and then look for a bottle of water as I need a drink. But the only water they have is a 2-litre size, and those are heavy, so I choose a non-diet Coca Cola instead. Caffeine, sugar, and lots of chemicals, but at least it's a treat (I haven't drunk one for nine years) It should give me a boost. None of those ingredients has ever given me a bad reaction anyway.
The store is still fairly empty as I go to pay. There's only one person at the checkout, but now I think I could do with maybe a couple more oranges, and at the fruit shelves pick out a small pack of blueberries too....
(It's so strange how one's destiny -for good or bad can hinge on a decision made in a moment; a whim, a coincidence of timing. In later months and years I will look back on the minutes spent choosing those two oranges and those blueberries as the things that seemed to seal my fate.)
By the time I am ready to pay, a small line has formed by the checkout , and I join it. A young woman suddenly comes out of the queue ahead, to grab something extra from one of the shelves, and return to her place. She is coughing harshly and passes within inches of me.
I hope she's a smoker....but my guess is she isn't. She has a "cold" or something. I hope I won't catch it.
So I put on my backpack, drink half the coke outside, carry the rest and walk home again.
It's beautiful countryside and a lovely day but the breeze has picked up and I can feel my wet clothes cooling against my skin. I soon forget the possible "cold".
Monday, I wash sheets and hang them on the line on another perfect Spring day
Tuesday, I visit little Sally cat as usual in the morning. I always stay with her for a while, so come back home around one-thirty.
Logs need to be split, so I set up the machine, and fetch a trolley-load from the shed. I always quite enjoy putting logs through the splitter.
There is no trace of what is to come.
I remember the time this illness began. It was nearly 2pm on Tuesday 27th March 2018 when I suddenly noticed the most odd sensations .
I became lightheaded, mildly nauseous, with slight twinges over my right eye; then shaky, uncoordinated, with an illogical tearfulness. I felt breathless, feverish, and my heart skipped beats, over and over again. The worst thing was that I could suddenly no longer focus on anything meaningful or heart-felt.
I tried to visualise the face or character of a dear one who had died, and that was shockingly impossible. It felt as if an ice cold barrier had come down between my life as I always knew it, and a whole new state which was alien. And it all happened at the flip of a switch.
Nothing -not food or liquids -helped the way I felt. The sensations went on and on, well into the evening, never abating for a moment.
And the next day, I felt completely, absolutely normal!
The following day, it all returned. Now it felt like flu; the exact peculiar malaise I usually got with flu, the tight chest, the aching limbs, the queasiness, weakness, shaking with any attempt to do anything, and that tiny twinge over my eye which made me wonder if my earlier eye injury might have become infected. But the eye looked fine. I also had no fever.
I tried my usual herbal medicine support for if or whenever, I came down with something. The last time had been two years ago when I'd caught a cold. The herbs made no difference.]
So basically, I just soldier on. I've had flu before. This will pass. It might take a week or two, but things ALWAYS go away in their own time. That is what I have known all my life.
Spring 2018.
My car isn't fixed yet. Something mysterious is happening to the battery, and it won't hold a charge longer than 24 hours. The mechanic is still puzzling over it and that means everywhere I go is on "Shank's Pony". That doesn't bother me much. Feet are reliable and don't require batteries.
I told him to put a new one in and be done with it. But that mechanic is overworked and they are shorthanded, so I am looking at another week before the car is returned to me.
I am used to walking for miles, and have been all of my life. When I was four and five years old I remember my Dad saying "Let's blow the cobwebs away!" and taking me for long walks on the Pennines in Derbyshire. I never complained, never threw a tantrum and demanded to be piggy-backed. I just loved it; the outdoors, the wind and weather, the endless rugged landscapes up there. I often imagined cobwebs blowing in long strands from my hair.
But back to Spring 2018.... The snow has gone. The online grocery delivery sent me seriously unripe apples, and no eggs. They do that randomly with no explanation. Sometimes online deliveries work perfectly, and sometimes (especally when I have no car!) -they don't.
I walk three miles to a nearby village where there is a little table outside a house, with eggs from Happy Hens. That's a nice place, as customers can see the hens in their clean large run, and they do truly look healthy and happy. There is no British Lion mark on these eggs and no telling how old they may be, but they cook like fresh-laid and are always tasty with golden yolks.
But now I have no fruit for breakfast, so on the Sunday decide to walk five miles to the garage-store to pick up some oranges. It's a warm early Spring day and on the walk I am soon drenched with an unusual sweat. My clothes become soaked. It doesn't worry me too much, as I will keep moving except for a brief stop in the store, so won't get chilled.
The store is empty. I pick up four oranges, chocolate biscuits, and then look for a bottle of water as I need a drink. But the only water they have is a 2-litre size, and those are heavy, so I choose a non-diet Coca Cola instead. Caffeine, sugar, and lots of chemicals, but at least it's a treat (I haven't drunk one for nine years) It should give me a boost. None of those ingredients has ever given me a bad reaction anyway.
The store is still fairly empty as I go to pay. There's only one person at the checkout, but now I think I could do with maybe a couple more oranges, and at the fruit shelves pick out a small pack of blueberries too....
(It's so strange how one's destiny -for good or bad can hinge on a decision made in a moment; a whim, a coincidence of timing. In later months and years I will look back on the minutes spent choosing those two oranges and those blueberries as the things that seemed to seal my fate.)
By the time I am ready to pay, a small line has formed by the checkout , and I join it. A young woman suddenly comes out of the queue ahead, to grab something extra from one of the shelves, and return to her place. She is coughing harshly and passes within inches of me.
I hope she's a smoker....but my guess is she isn't. She has a "cold" or something. I hope I won't catch it.
So I put on my backpack, drink half the coke outside, carry the rest and walk home again.
It's beautiful countryside and a lovely day but the breeze has picked up and I can feel my wet clothes cooling against my skin. I soon forget the possible "cold".
Monday, I wash sheets and hang them on the line on another perfect Spring day
Tuesday, I visit little Sally cat as usual in the morning. I always stay with her for a while, so come back home around one-thirty.
Logs need to be split, so I set up the machine, and fetch a trolley-load from the shed. I always quite enjoy putting logs through the splitter.
There is no trace of what is to come.
I remember the time this illness began. It was nearly 2pm on Tuesday 27th March 2018 when I suddenly noticed the most odd sensations .
I became lightheaded, mildly nauseous, with slight twinges over my right eye; then shaky, uncoordinated, with an illogical tearfulness. I felt breathless, feverish, and my heart skipped beats, over and over again. The worst thing was that I could suddenly no longer focus on anything meaningful or heart-felt.
I tried to visualise the face or character of a dear one who had died, and that was shockingly impossible. It felt as if an ice cold barrier had come down between my life as I always knew it, and a whole new state which was alien. And it all happened at the flip of a switch.
Nothing -not food or liquids -helped the way I felt. The sensations went on and on, well into the evening, never abating for a moment.
And the next day, I felt completely, absolutely normal!
The following day, it all returned. Now it felt like flu; the exact peculiar malaise I usually got with flu, the tight chest, the aching limbs, the queasiness, weakness, shaking with any attempt to do anything, and that tiny twinge over my eye which made me wonder if my earlier eye injury might have become infected. But the eye looked fine. I also had no fever.
I tried my usual herbal medicine support for if or whenever, I came down with something. The last time had been two years ago when I'd caught a cold. The herbs made no difference.]
So basically, I just soldier on. I've had flu before. This will pass. It might take a week or two, but things ALWAYS go away in their own time. That is what I have known all my life.