Ill

Well I’m lying here in bed writing this on the laptop. I have a temperature. This laptop is slightly odd though as it has a separate screen and is bigger than your usual lap top. And come to think of it, the bed seems slightly more upright than I usually like them and not as comfortable, and do laptops come with their own tables? I think I am delirious. I have been overdoing it. But though I know it I can’t seem to stop. Spring work frenzy. My body rightly keeps telling me I am no spring chicken but my brain refuses to accept that, so as usually happens when I get close to the point of exhaustion I have a week of wild and irregular heartbeats and as happened the day before yesterday, my temperature drops from the normal 37 to 35. This always heralds something, a clear warning to those that listen but stupidly I have never learnt to heed it. Too much to do. It was fun walking because my brain stayed exactly where it was whenever I moved and sort of caught up later when it felt like it. But yesterday the temperature was back to normal and I was down in the woods with the chain saw and billhook. Again, I should have known something was up because I was in a foul mood and everything was going wrong, getting my billhook caught up here and there and slicing open my trousers with the chainsaw. I must have looked quite a sight as I slashed violently at the perfidious hazel branches grunting pig-like at every stroke and swearing loudly at the trees and the billhook and the steepness of the slope and the mud and holes and the sky and god and so on. But then about eleven o’clock it got silly so I went to measure my temperature, 38°C, then half an hour later at lunchtime 38.5 and so on up to 39.4. Bed. Bed with two hot water bottles all my clothes and a hat and extra blankets and I still couldn’t get warm. Nausea too. I hate being ill obviously but sometimes it’s interesting because as the body can do nothing I get to dream a lot and sort of find new depths to my subconscious and at last get time to think about all those things that usually get pushed to the back of your mind. I tried to picture everyone I have ever had a friendship with back to childhood. Great fun, I can recommend it. So I slept a bit until the wife who had a day off to get the things I couldn’t do on my own done obviously, picked up the howler and measured the temp again - 38.3 and by seven o’clock it was almost back to normal. This morning I felt like someone had beaten the crap out of me with a mallet. But temperature was normal. Which is just as well because the wife was at work today so I had to take her and the howler down to the village and of course having a wood-fired central heating system, there was that to take care of. So I thought I’d relax this morning and light the furnace this afternoon and went back to bed for a bit.

Unfortunately it’s ten-thirty and I now have a temperature again - 39.4 and feel weak and dizzy and just walking is difficult. Odd really. Outside it’s freezing and drizzling and of course the furnace wouldn’t light first time and going down to get wood I slammed my head into the door lintel and walking back to the furnace with the wood I slipped over in the mud and just lay there thinking I might perhaps die there as a less exhausting alternative to getting up. But the rain was so very wet so here I am inside writing this. Well I presume I’m inside as it’s bloody cold. It’s not worth going back to bed now because the furnace needs tending for a while before it gets up to speed and anyway I prefer to sit up when I feel sick, which I do. So instead of watching TV or reading a book, not that either are easy with a temperature, I thought I’d write my blog. You see, this is the attitude that got me here in the first place. Why would anyone with a temperature over 30°C want to write his blog? It’s a mystery. So I’m going to stop.