… day I’ve had today. If I’m leaving the table with food still left on my plate, then you know that I’m really ill. I can safely say that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve felt as bad as this and I’m beginning to understand when I was first at Leuven that I chose a place with breakfast provided, so that at least I’d have one meal each day.
But last night, after finishing writing my notes, I was back in bed at about 23:45 and I wasn’t long awake.
The alarm going off at 06:29 shattered my joyful sleep, and I was feeling so ill that I switched off the alarm, switched on the one for 07:59 and went back to sleep.
Not for long, though, because Brain of Britain had forgotten about the second alarm at 06:33. That put the tin hat on it and as I couldn’t go back to sleep, I arose from the Dead.
A desperate stagger into the bathroom was followed by another desperate stagger into the kitchen for the medication. All in all, it took me a whole hour to sort myself out this morning.
Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to see what there was that I’d recorded. There were a couple of little voyages that I’d had over the last couple of days that I added back into the various entries, and then turned my attention to last night’s. I’d gone to a rugby league match at somewhere. It was an important cup final. There were all kinds of confusion taking place. First of all, it was freezing cold and the ground was extremely hard. Secondly, one of the teams had changed its starting line-up and the referee had to intervene to make sure that the players who had not been in the original starting line-up were placed in positions in which they had registered themselves rather than in positions in which the team wanted them to play, which meant that there was an extremely strange field formation for one of the teams at the kick-off. The game started, and I began to wander around and came across an Indian market, one of these tiny little affairs inside a village hall where the local Indian community was having a kind-of car boot sale type of thing. I had a good wander around in there for a while but didn’t see anything that I particularly fancied but it was coming up to lunchtime so I went to find a food stall. There was a food stall there but it didn’t open until a little later. I thought that I wasn’t inclined to waste too much more time wandering around in here until the food stall opens or was I going to go to somewhere else to see what was happening there instead.
It beats me why I would go to a rugby league match. That’s a sport that has no interest for me. We did play it at school, but mainly to annoy our new games teacher who wanted us to play rugby union instead of football. We passionately refused to co-operate and in the end he gave up. He spent the games lessons in the staff room drinking coffee and we carried on playing football. However, I did find a hidden talent. I could kick quite accurately with either foot so our tactic was to pass the ball to me and I’d kick it over the bar, something that totally enraged the teacher.
It’s much more likely that I’d be at an Indian market, especially if there’s Indian food about.
The nurse came as usual today and expressed his sympathy at my plight, although I need more than sympathy right now. Anyway, he didn’t stay too long.
After he left, I could make breakfast, not that I wanted much, and I could read some more of MY BOOK.
Our author is still perambulating around the various wards of inner London and he’s come across another payment of rent by flowers. Ralph Le Feure and his heirs could hold a parcel of land from Thomas de Arderne "freely without all challenge yielding therefore yearly to the said Thomas and his heirs one clove or slip of gilliflowers at the feast of Easter."
Back in here I wrote out the notes for Tuesday that were outstanding, and they are now online, complete with some photos of my new kitchen as far as it has gone right now. It’s well-worth a look if you haven’t seen it before.
That took me up to the arrival of my faithful cleaner who sorted out my patches and left me to await the arrival of the taxi.
That was when I discovered that the electric door lock wasn’t working and I had to descend the stairs, in my state of health and carrying my bag, all alone. And that’s not something that I ever want to do again.
The bad news at the dialysis centre was that my weight was over the three and a half hour limit so they put me down to stay for four hours, something that I could well do without. And with all of the tests that they had to do, it took hours to connect me and I wasn’t let go until 18:45.
The doctor came to see me for a chat but didn’t have much to say really that was of any kind of solution. But he had the blood pressure sensor set for every fifteen minutes so I was constantly disturbed by nurses running in.
Not that I minded much because one of them was Alexi, the baby of the service and she’s quite cute. She can soothe my fevered brow any time she likes.
Eventually I could leave, and then we had to drop off someone else in Avranches so it was 19:30 when I returned home, quite fed up.
My cleaner had brought down a couple of boxes of stuff from upstairs so I sorted those out in the new apartment, and then I failed miserably once more to climb the stairs.
After my cleaner left, I tried to eat some food but that failed miserably too, and so I’m going to bed and I don’t care any more. I really am in a state right now.
But seeing as we have been talking about restaurants, food and the like … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a sign that I once saw in the window of an Italian restaurant in the Midlands somewhere.
"Don’t stand outside feeling miserable. Come inside and be fed up."
