Hinterland

Weird things happen when you neglect your blog. Firstly, spam tumbleweed rolls by – a morass of dodgy grammar and strange requests. Like this:

The diameter can include often not the program, but too the bar of the guy above the making scale. Ozone machine health risk: applications are n't in the efforts of an torque, filing on the cyphacyphathe cell.

I mean – what??

The other thing that happens is life and blogging carries on perfectly well without you. It’s like being sick and hearing life chugging outside your window, with no regard for you lying in your bed, reeking but too ill to do anything about it. And that is a very poor link as to why I’ve been so neglectful of my blog. A bout of work followed by a kidney infection.

It happened like this. A minor bout of what I thought was cystitis, followed by a strange lethargy. Went to yoga class, came home, fell asleep for three hours. Next day, staggered out of bed and fell back into it, only to get up to be violently sick. And then the strange part. I had these psychedelic dreams, featuring Kelsey Grammer from Frasier. My head was spinning in my sleep. I rolled across great waves. Blood poisoning apparently. Husband said I would fall asleep in the middle of sentences. He got me antibiotics and checked on me every three or four hours. “I knew you weren’t dead because you changed position,” he chortled but he was worried. I ate nothing, drank nothing, could keep nothing down. One night he was checking on me and I rolled over. My face was thin and puckered from dehydration. “I had a glimpse of what you will look like when you’re seventy,” he said. Vaguely I thought of that birthday rhyme. You look like a monkey and you smell like one too. I did and I did. Amazing how quickly the carapace of respectability falls off. I was milk white with hair darkly greasy and black smudges under my eyes.

Hospital beckoned. But I stayed home because eventually I managed to get some liquids down. Husband changed my tee shirts and sheets, and placed a bath mat by the side of the toilet so when I was kneeling down hurling foam I wouldn’t get sore knees to add to my woes. What a nice man I thought as my stomach went into spasms for the umpteenth time. Then I crawled back to bed, listened to domestic noises from downstairs and amused myself by counting the veins on my wrist.

Husband brought The Girl to see me. Something odd happened to my sense of smell. Either it had sharpened or I’d turned into a werewolf. She smelled of sweet stuff and fresh air – I couldn’t bear it. I hugged her but felt a rush of nausea. It was terrible – I was revolted by the smell of my own daughter. The Boy nervously sat by my bed and rubbed my arm. He smelled of cheap aftershave. I dreaded to think what I smelled like.

Thank God for antibiotics. I took pills that looked like genetically modified bees, all stripy and huge, but they worked. I ate lots of protein, stopped drinking alcohol and began to put on the stone and a half I’d lost. Yeah I know – boo hoo. But I’m on the mend now just in time for Spring.