shadows of echoes of memories of songs

Update: yes, it is chicken pox. Ho hum. I guess at least we're getting it out of the way early, and at least it manifested itself before we visited pregnant friends, friends with small babies, etc.

Img now has loads of spots -- new ones seem to be appearing almost as I watch, & she even has spots on her fingers, poor mite -- and is a bit whiny and grouchy, though it doesn't seem to be preventing her from getting on with learning to crawl.

The coming week is going to be a bit of a trial as I won't be able to do any of the things I normally do to get through the week -- things which involve going to children's centres or cafés or on buses or into shops, and I don't want to spread the germs around any more than absolutely necessary (and any more than I already have done). I predict a lot of Long Walks. Let's just hope there's no more snow. :-/

I'm not blogging about the elections. I'm barely even watching the elections (though I'm listening to the BBC's live streaming video in the background). I make a lousy political commentator at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.

I've had a lousy cough and cold for several days, and last night it turned nasty; tonsils swelled up, swallowing became painful and difficult, speaking became nearly impossible. This morning it took the doctor about 2 seconds to diagnose tonsilitis. ("What's wrong?" "*croak*" "Let's have a look... oh dear. Are you allergic to penicillin? You've got tonsilitis." She'd printed out the prescription practically before I'd answered her, though the only answer I could manage anyway was a shake of the head.)

I hate coughs and colds. I hate their narrowing effect; the throat narrowing to a painful bottleneck, the nasal passages narrowing from a river of air to a stagnant trickle, the lungs tightening and wheezing. Time narrows, too: to the next dose of painkillers, or the next digit on the clock through the long sleepless hours of the night. But worst of all, the mind narrows; lights go out throughout all the buildings that make up the civilisation of the psyche, until it's left as a vast disused lot with just one single dogged but insignificant train of thought, marching like a line of ants across a pile of rubble. Every cough and sneeze jolts it off track; it struggles to get through the tangled undergrowth of pain and the sticky dust of congestion; it forever risks being washed down the cracks with the endless pourings-on of boiling water (mitigated by herbal teabags); and when it does get anywhere, the 'line' turns out to be a scurrying disconnected mass. It can only carry anything if all the parts work together; and under that sort of onslaught, they don't always manage it.

Here they come, though. Struggling through, carrying the last leaf-fragments of this post on their backs, before crawling back underground into the dark.