diary of a cold

Two days ago:
So I am sick in bed and this perhaps explains my reluctance to work even though (even though!) I have a huge amount of material to read, write and edit/comment on. Insane! I was lying there feeling all maudlin and rank and I developed a theory, about however labour-saving our lives become, we still manifest some kind of resistance to labour – because I had all the work on a memory stick, and all I had to do was get my computer out, and put the memory stick in it, and that mere act seemed as daunting as whatever my pre-industrial forebears must have had to do – get on a boat to Africa to pluck an ostrich feather and squeeze a squid for ink or whatever.

I just have a stupid cold, it’s never going to go away it’s a fixture now. I thought I had chased it off last Friday, and now it’s returned doubly monstrous, and I’m losing my voice.

Today:
Well I didn’t take it seriously enough and now I have pneumonia – haven’t had this particular gift since 1986 when it spelt my last days ‘living’ in London. Last night I was shaking uncontrollably and in some pain but strangely also some indescribable angsty discomfort. What can that be? The discomfort was worse than the pain. The ‘after hours’ doctor came and said I had pneumonia and gave me antibiotics and I was quickly much, much better though I seemed to wake up every hour and regarded the night as something to endure.

When I had pneumonia in 1986 I had to go to a hospital in Iforgetwhere, actually Hammersmith, and I had a blood test, and I remember asking the doctor if he could tell me my blood type, and he said that cost more money than they could afford, so I now assume it was an HIV test, though someone might be able to set me straight on that. Then he asked me how I thought I had become so sick and I went into a weird reflection on probable psychosomatic causes (that I had somehow sensed it coming). He took this in his stride and I became of the opinion soon after that I only talked like that because I was a bit mental from the illness. That said, I have reflected that over the last few weeks I have been extremely eager for the pressures of the end of semester to be past, and wishing I could go on holiday… so perhaps there is a bit of psychosomaticism involved, though whether it’s causative or responsive I can’t say. Nor can you.