Closer to normal

I've now been back at work for two days. I can't claim to feel one-hundred-percent yet, but I am improving steadily. It's done me a lot of good to be around other people and to talk and interact again, after two weeks of being very quiet indeed. I'm pretty tired this evening, but I'm about to go home; and after tomorrow it's the weekend and I get to put my feet up for two days.

One bit of good news; I bought a bookcase a little while ago, and when I was still off sick but beginning to feel more active, I finally got my books into the new book shelf, clearing three of the remaining cardboard boxes left over from my move in March in the process. Of course, this exposed a bit more floor in need of cleaning, but one can't have everything. Not having my books stacked up in packing cases is nice, though.

Going home for an early supper and a peaceful evening, I hope. I wonder if channel five will be working properly? The guy-who-was-a-slob who moved out took the television and the freeview box (they did belong to him, I hasten to add), so we now have only a little, old, crackly portable tv with a cheap bent-wire indoor aerial, and reception on channels 3 and 5 is poor at best - curtains of grey mist descend at intervals, and the soundtrack is swallowed each time in wild hissing noises. If anyone has a decent television (?& freeview box?!?) they don't want, it would be welcomed eagerly in Flanders Road.

Normal service is (almost) resumed...

Today I made it as far as the internet café. I have had the dreaded swine flu, and unlike a lot of things one dreads, this merited a good deal of the alarm. It was VILE. I was in bed for five days straight, and too weak even to hold a book for the first four. Test Match Special kept me sane, just.

I'm now up and about and moderately mobile, though my legs turn rubbery after twenty minutes or so of walking (a few days ago it was "after five minutes", so the improvement is steady), and I'm beginning to get my life sorted out again. I've been signed off work until Wednesday as my GP believes in taking time to recuperate properly after this little bastard of a virus. I'm not going to say no; I think I could probably manage a day's work mentally by now, but as for physically, well, that would be doubtful.

It's been a full couple of weeks. While I lay in bed ill, two of the other lodgers in the house moved out. I had known they were going to, it wasn't a stelalthy move on their part to sneak off while I was incapacitated! The one I didn't like has gone I know-not whither, and good riddance (he was a slob). The one I got on well with has moved into a new flat with his very nice Orcadian girlfriend, aboout ten minutes walk away, and they are saying "Keep in touch, come round for tea", so I hope we'll stay in contact. A new guy has moved into one of the vacant rooms who turns out to be a bit of a human dynamo; new-broom-sweeps-clean, bang bang, let's get this sorted out and that dealt-with, are you okay with this, okay, whi-iiz, wheee... Hard to keep up with; but he cleans up after himself and talks to me instead of flouncing and glaring like his predecessor. So he is a good news guy.

The nice thing about being ill is getting better, no doubt about it (and please excuse the cliché). I'm intensely appreciative of things like food, fresh air, taking a shower, sitting in the garden looking at my petunias and dahlias, watching the kids play football in the park as I toddle to the shops. All those things one takes so completely for granted normally. I suppose that with time I will grow blasé about being able to get up, shower, put on some clothes and go downstairs to make breakfast without coming over faint and having to lie down; but at the moment, the simplest actions of ordinary life feel like the blessings they truly are.