Sunday 4 March 2012

under the weather

So last week's post has proven to be unfortunately prophetic.

One of the reasons I dismissed for why I hadn't blogged was that I'd been ill.  Well, this week I am ill - hurrah and huzzah!

Actually, not either of those things, as I've felt bloody awful most of the weekend.  I think it's a cold.  I say think because I felt a lot worse than my symptoms match up with - I've only had a little bit of a runny nose and there's been no cough to speak of.  Instead I've felt really achy and tired and had a bit of a 'behind the eyes' headache.  Last night I was also boiling up and had to shed my duvet and then promptly felt freezing.

I've actually just started to feel a bit better as I type this.  I'm not sure if that means I'm over the hump of it or I'm simply about to move from this feeling awful phase in to more traditional symptoms.

But also, weirdly, the weather has been crap today.  It's basically drizzled and rained  all day, so I've been under the weather because of that too.  It actually snowed a little while back.  IT was obviously way to warm and wet for it to settle, but odd nonetheless.

It meant I couldn't have gone out for my walks today, even if I'd felt better than I do.

I'm not really surprised I've come down with something if I'm honest.  There's been a lot of people ill at work and they're great big open plan offices with loads of people crammed in.  That means that if anyone gets a cold and is coughing and sneezing it can easily infect loads of people who are close by.  It's also an air conditioned building, so that helps to spread germs too.

Plus I've had a hell of week.  I had to go to a meeting in London on Tuesday and it was horrendous.

The meeting was great, it was the rest of it that was crap.  They had me rent a car, which was quite stressful, because you're always a bit nervous when it comes to a new vehicle and of course I had to travel around the M25 in rush hour.

Which took the best part of two hours going there and two hours going back.  The worst bit was getting on to the M25 going there - it took bloody ages and I regretted taking the route I did.  Going back it took ages mainly because I hadn't had a chance to eat anything all day and so I had to go and get something to eat.  But that meant I was then driving home in the dark and I could not for the life of me work out how to switch on the headlights.

The vehicle was a Vauxhall Corsa and it had the usual storks behind the steering wheel that allowed you to turn the indicators on and do the windscreen wipers.  However, in every car I've ever driven the stork that does the indicators also does the headlights.  But not here.

It lets you put the lights on full beam, but not turn them on!

Eventually after everybody flashing and beeping me and me getting worried the police might pull me over I stopped and tried to work out how to do it.  Well it turns out that, in order to turn the lights on there's a rotary dial down by your right knee.  I mean, what the hell is it doing down there?

There were two controls on the indicator stalk that I'd been playing with thinking they were the headlights, but Christ knows what they did.

Plus I was desperately trying to get a report somewhere near finished by the end of the week, which I basically failed to do.

So yeah, it was a horribly stressful and tiring week, so it's no wonder I caught some bug.

On the upside, my concerted staying in bed has meant I've cleared a load of telly stuff that had gotten backlogged, which is always nice.