I'm back - well jinxed!

So, I’m back from my trip. And well jinxed it was. So much so that I’ve been home for two weeks – most of it spent lying in bed.

I suppose I should have suspected it might all go pear-shaped when the “friend” in Switzerland announced she wouldn’t be home despite our arrangements to visit and stay with her. As you may recall, things became still more stressful when our friend in Spain with whom we were due to stay failed – until the last moment – to produce the required letter of invitation D need to get his visa.

I had, however, thought after all that, we were home free. Ah me, the best laid plans of mice and Vanillas – especially when Mercury is in retrograde through Taurus. Oh yes, that really puts sod’s law to work.

We arrived in London at 6am after an 11 hour flight. We couldn’t, we discovered, check into our hotel until lunchtime and so wandered the streets of Mayfair and W1 and communed with the ducks on the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

Wandering the streets of Mayfair and W1

Communing in Hyde Park

Finally we returned to the hotel to discover they’d bungled our reservation and we’d been put in the wrong room – a matter which couldn’t be rectified until the following day as the hotel was fully booked. A few sharp words later and having got hopelessly lost navigating the multiple staircases in the hotel we collapsed in a soggy sort of heap.

The following day, having left the toxic soup that is the London Underground I felt a niggle in the back of my throat… By the next morning I was as sick as the proverbial dog, or should I say pig… Aching, feverish, sore throat, cough, snotty nose. Yep, I had it flu, and most likely, we think, swine flu.

I blame the tube...

I spent two days dosed to the gills on Day Nurse so I could meet up with my wonderful children’s writer friends (many of whom you'll find in my sidebar) and fellow blogger, Fire Byrd. I don’t remember too much of it but I do know that they were all the most special and friendly people and courtesy of several colas and coffees, I had a wonderful time.

Meeting up with children's writer friends at the Royal Festival Hall

Then I spent two days lying in bed sweating and shivering and feeling like all hell. Then I spent a day overdoing it – determined to meet my bloggy pals, Sue Guiney, Debi Alper and Lettuce.

Authors Sue Guiney and Debi Alper

And then I knew I really should go home as I could feel my system heading for a state of total collapse.

But of course, the rational – i.e. irrational – mind likes to think it knows better than the body’s wisdom so fate felt the need to intervene. The day before we were due to fly to Spain, I received a call to say our friend there had had a heart attack and was intensive care. He wasn’t in any danger, I was told, and he had said we could stay in his new apartment but we wouldn’t be able to see him.

It didn’t take rocket science to realise that going to Spain was off the cards, and when we calculated the cost of staying on in London for an extra five days and my old gut woes started to grumble, there seemed only one sensible thing left to do. Heed the signs and Go Home!

It must have been “meant to be” because we got a flight out the following night and by the time I saw my doctor, she took one look at me and said, “Bed, for a week, or you’ll have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome!”

So there you have it and such is the way of life. You go with the flow, ride the punches, learn a few important lessons on the way – like… we will never, ever arrange to stay with friends ever again!

And now it’s back to the manuscript, plotting and further research!

At least I got to take a flight on the London Eye!

In Praise of colds, flu and nightmares...

I've been struck down by the dreaded lurgy - urgh, blah, sneeze, cough, sniffle, hack, whinge, whine, complain, wheeze, grumble.
Funny thing is, each time I'm struck down by said lurgy, I always find myself humming a singular little tune and croakily reciting the words of said tune, which I learned when I was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper...
Now you may not approve of Gilbert and Sullivan but as a kid I loved their operettas - they just cracked me up - presumably this is why this particular ditty has stayed with me all these years...
Enjoy. Or sneeze. Or cough all over your partner. Or whatever it is you do....

Lord Chancellor’s Nightmare Song
from Iolanthe - by Gilbert and Sullivan

When youre lying awake with a dismal headache and
Repose is tabood by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to
Indulge in, without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire, the bed-clothes conspire of
Usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counter-pane goes, and uncovers your toes,
And your sheet slips demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles, you feel like mixed
Pickles, so terribly sharp is the pricking,
And youre hot and youre cross, and you tumble and
Toss til there's nothing twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bed-clothes all creep to the ground in a heap
And you pick 'em all up in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to
Remain at its usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a dose, with
Hot eye-balls and head ever aching,
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams
That you'd very much better be waking;
For you dream you are crossing the channel, and
Tossing about in a steamer from Harwich,
Which is something between a large bathing machine and
A very small second class carriage,
And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to
A party of friends and relations,
They're a ravenous horde, and they all come on board
At Sloane Square and South Kensington stations.
And bound on that journey you find your attorney
(who started this morning from Devon);
He's a bit undersized and you don't feel surprised
When he tells you he's only eleven.
Well you're driving like mad with this singular lad
(by the bye the ships now a four wheeler),
And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad
Names when you tell him that ties pay the dealer;
But this you cant stand so you throw up your hand,
And you find you're as cold as an icicle;
In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold
Clocks) crossing Salisbury plain on a bicycle:
And he and the crew are on bicycles too, which they've
Somehow or other invested in,
And he's telling the tars all the particulars of a
Company he's interested in;
It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices, all
Goods from cough mixtures to cables
(which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers as
Though they were all vegetables;
You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman
(first take off his boots with a boot tree),
And his legs will take root, and his fingers will
Shoot, and theyll blossom and bud like a fruit
Tree;
From the green grocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower,
pine apple and cranberries,
While the pastry cook plant cherry brandy will grant,
Apple puffs, three corners, and banburys;
The shares are a penny and ever so many are taken by
Rothschild and Baring,
And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake
with a shudder, despairing.
You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and
No wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor
And you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins,
and your flesh is acreep, for your left leg's asleep,
And you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose,
And some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue,
And a thirst that's intense,
And a general sense that you havent been sleeping in clover;
But the darkness has passd, and its daylight at
Last, and the night has been long, ditto, ditto my song,
And thank goodness they're both of them over!

(Image courtesy of a google image search and the good old internet.)