The Pitiful Cat ............

Hullo ma wee blog,


I'm lying on the bed. It's late afternoon and The Lovely G and one of her friends are downstairs in the lounge watching a movie on DVD. Lorraine is here staying over and will help us celebrate the 1st August, Switzerland's national day, tomorrow when some of the family come for a special Swiss meal. Lorraine and The Lovely G went to Switzerland together for a short holiday late last year and since then she's been enthusing about all things Swiss to all and sundry, so we have naturally included her in the invite to this years family bash. I've left them to it as I still feel choked with this damned cold and am feeling, if not somewhat antisocial, that I don't want to be around people in case I pass on the dreaded lurgy. My flu has left me with a chesty wheeze which brings coughing fits when I lie down for any length of time.

I too have a DVD on up here and have been engrossed in the film 'Babel' starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchet when I become aware that Jess, who has been in the room with me for a companionable couple of hours, is lying watching my chest rise and fall and appears to be listening to the cacophony of wheezing, whistling and low groaning that is coming from me with every breath. My awareness of her has changed the rhythm of my breathing and she now looks back at me. She has what I think is a sympathetic look on her face, although I might be wrong. She is lying on my right a few feet away down the bed, head towards me and her tail contemplatively twitching across the last few inches of  its white and ginger tipped length. She slumps over onto her side and stretches both front paws out towards me, arching her back and stretching her spine as she reaches away with her back paws. In front of me her nearest paws spread themselves momentarily and show claws of gleaming sharpness as she yawns in an eye closing movement before twisting her head upside down to gain another perspective of me perhaps. She remains, one front paw stretched towards me, the other crooked back on her chest, tail curled questioningly in mid air, in an almost pantomime catty posture as she watches, watches, watches.

I smile and make a soft noise at her which causes her stretched paw to come even closer as she turns more into an inverted curl, lying on her back. The paw now moves down until it comes in contact with my thigh and, contact made, she pushes gently against the material of my trousers. She begins to purr softly as if to say "You're doing it all wrong! This is how it should sound!  It's easy - I can even do it upside down!"

I'm sure she's smiling at me.

blooming cat!

Déjà Flu

The tree at the top of the hill

Hullo ma wee blog,

For the last few days, in fact since Saturday evening when the Lovely G and I got home from the meal with Gordon and Charlotte after the air show, I have been suffering from flu. I've been here before, of course. In fact I feel like I have been here much more often since I became unemployed than I ever did when I was working. I genuinely can't recall actually being so ill as to be off work - except for recuperation from a knee op {when in reality I worked from home} - anytime in the last three years.

I almost feel like a fraud. It's like my body has given permission to shut down because it doesn't have a job to maintain or anything more worthwhile to do. While I have been telling myself that looking for work is really important and that I am focused on just that my body has said 'Oh yeah? Well have some of this sunshine.'  In the normal course of events - well in my working past that is - I very rarely was ill and if I was, well I just worked through it didn't I. After all I had places to go, people to see and stuff that just had to get done. That was the kind of attitude that also meant that anytime I was on holiday I would invariably end up with a cold or something two or three days into the holiday, as if my body had suddenly cottoned on to the fact that I was on free time and exacted a penalty for ignoring it up till then. Actually, now I think about it I do remember working from home a couple of times when long car journeys didn't seem feasible for whatever reason, but regardless I always ended up still working. Yet for the last few - 5 days now actually - I have been literally floored by this bug and have simply ceased to function on anything other than the most basic level. I feel as weak as a kitten and even Jess - the runt of the litter - could no doubt take me with one paw tied behind her back.

Today though, for the first time in days, I have opened up the laptop and felt able to even think about posting something. I have looked at a few postings from blogs I follow but have been so thoroughly unenthusiastic that I haven't been able to respond to some interesting stuff that's been posted except in a mere one or two almost ignorantly short instances. Even today this damned wee bug has still firmly got me in its grip, perhaps not quite so tightly as two days ago but it sneakily reminds me just how close it still is by sending me on coughing spasms which seem designed solely to remind me just how much pain my rib and stomach muscles can generate, or by sending small barbs of pain into my skull when I simply run my hand down from my forehead and my fingers brush my eyeballs. Whatever this bug has been, it's a doozy! I still cant be more than a few feet away from a box of tissues even if I am using them much less than before and found myself standing in the shower this morning with the shower head adjusted to a concentrated spray and the jet directed straight into my face in an unconscious attempt to massage my aching sinuses. I have taken pills and potions, decongestants and lemony drinks till I'm sure I'm now part lemon myself and even spent the best part of an hour yesterday self inflicting my dreaded childhood treatment of holding my towel covered head over a bowl of steaming water - granted with some olbas oil in rather than the old way of dropping some Vicks vapour rub into the water - all to very little effect.

Even now when I cough or have one of those blooming sneezing fits- ignoring the pain from the ribs - I get tremendous sensations of ringing in my ears and that weird out-of-body/off balance/seeing stars sensation you get where you know that the pressure created has just blown yet another few precious brain cells to smithereens because the normal escape channels are just not doing their job. After the last five days I'm surprised there are still enough of the little blighters still working. Thankfully, for the last two nights I have actually managed to get some sleep - and last night I actually slept better than I do 'normally' surprisingly enough - after three days and nights of sleeping only in short fitful and unhelpful bursts. Also, unusually for me, my appetite has completely crashed and I have survived on a small plate of bran flakes and couple of apples a day {PLEASE let me have lost some weight after all this!!!} At least my digestive tract will be in order hopefully. Actually, just between you and I, there is a definite down side to the last few days diet which has come to the fore, but let's leave it at that shall we?

Now, the sun is shining. I'm going to put on my shades and go and sit quietly on the patio for a moment or two. I'll no doubt be apologising to the local wildlife for my lack of attention over the last few days while I look forlornly at how the grass has grown, knowing that I'm in no fit state to cut it and yet we have visitors coming this weekend and the forecast is for rain over the next two days as well. Will I pick myself up and just get it done?

I honestly have no idea.

see you later.

Listening to absolutely nothing............

I hate the flu..........

Hullo ma wee blog,

My razor-shredded throat wrenches yet another lung-destroying cough from a windpipe made of sandpaper raw flesh. My nostrils, stuffed full of tightly packed mucous laced with shards of glass, force pressure jets of pain back along my sinus to ears blocked with clay,  reverberating with every agonising whisper yet resistant to any attempt by external sounds to enter. My head is being beaten mercilessly by a Brazilian samba ensemble on speed and the drummer from Spear Of Destiny's nastier, but more rythmic, big brother. They seem to have been locked in competition inside my head for days. I force open eyelashes stuck with tapioca and let in blinding light to eviscerate my retinas with lightning bolts.

 Still alive then.

 I groan, in manly, near silent agony, shielding the worries from my nearest and dearest, who gather round in a candle-lit vigil, singing hymns, praying for the soul not yet departed. I heroically leave my deathbed propped on legs of straw and head barefoot to the bathroom over cold concrete floors strewn with glass, nails and edge on razor blades, joints aching and now retching phlegm like some neglected Victorian victim in the final throes of a gruesome terminal disease, as my loved ones reel back in fear and dread. Ice cold, shaking and with cold-sweat dripping from my suddenly emaciated body, I endure the vicious onslaught of nostril-evacuation while I perform the necessary last rites of ablution.

I return to my hard, unyielding bed, pull the thin, meagre sack-cloth covering over me and surrender myself to the unalterable course of this brutal viral infection rampaging through my weakened being, calling for my darling wife to contact the medical profession and advise my cold cadaver will be with them shortly. I give permission for my corpse to be used for study, for the benefit of humanity. Several medical conundrums will surely finally be resolved. I lie comforted by the sure and certain knowledge that my life insurance will see my lovely G rest in luxury for the foreseeable future. I close my eyes and try to fade away quietly - for her sake.

I hear a bell softly ring and a distant sing-song voice calls mournfully,

"Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead."

I bloody hate the flu.......

I take a last look at the lovely G.

"Your looking better. How about making me a nice cup of tea?"


see you later.........