Rachel Coleman

Thu 24 Apr: tried out a Learn to Play session at Alexandra Palace. It's a great session, the coach is good, but it's very late at night - so late it's not actually possible to get home by public transport afterward. My friend P drove us (now she has an ULEZ-compliant car) but we got home at 2am and my alarm goes off at 7am and I was really struggling on Friday. In theory I would like to go again, but in practice I haven't felt up to it since.

Sat 26 Apr: away game for Kodiaks B in Oxford. Our first away game of the season, our first game with none of our league players, and my first game as Captain. We lost 7-17 but it was honestly a good-tempered and positive atmosphere and some fantastic learning and effort displayed. Our goalie was playing her first full game ever (having played ten minutes in our previous game), and you could see her improving almost minute by minute.

Sun 27 Apr: social visit to beckyc and S, then a lift with one of the Kodiaks A players and her dad from Huntingdon to Peterborough to watch the league team beat Peterborough 15-2 and secure the top spot in WNIHL 2S. Then a lift back with a different player to Cambridge in time for bed Sunday evening.

Thu 1 May: outdoor cricket game, my first this century (hehe). An internal game to warm up for the summer, as West Cambridge has enough people for two teams. I enjoyed fielding, got over my nerves enough to (badly) bowl a single over, and ended up in bat for rather longer than expected. Mostly due to my batting partner, but I at least managed not to do anything catastrophic when I was facing the ball.

Fri 2 May: summer scrimmages with TriBase are back, so I went along; it's the first time I've played with this team since September, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I've improved since then. (Don't get me wrong, I'm still not really up to their standard, but the gap has closed a lot and I'm keeping up a lot better.)

Sat 3 May: last Kodiaks A home game of the season, this time for the league Cup, which they also won. I have finally built a confident enough team for the off-ice work that I could stay entirely on front-of-house during the game, freeing up our steady ticket sales volunteer to watch a whole game. I missed quite a bit of it due to talking to people (shocking I know).

Sun 4 May: trip to London for a hockey friend's birthday, but with bonus addition of brunch beforehand at Dishoom with my baby sibling. The bottomless house chai is still my favourite. The birthday celebration was outdoors in a park, and the weather got steadily chillier as the afternoon went on. I managed to leave my sunhat behind in my friend's flat (this is the hat I bought in San Sebastián last summer after losing the previous sunhat somewhere on a hill, itself a replacement for one I left on a train earlier that summer), but it will make its way back to me eventually, I'm sure.

Mon 5 May: over to see naath in Bury St Edmunds, where I got caught in the traditional Bank Holiday rain on the way to get lunch from M&S. You know you're not in Cambridge any more when there are dozens of car parking spaces on the high street but no cycle racks.

This afternoon I should have been playing cricket again with West Cambridge after work, but I started going down with a cold yesterday afternoon and have spent most of the time since in bed feeling sorry for myself. I am really hoping to be recovered by Saturday as I have an ice hockey tournament to play with Warbirds on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I also have a bunch of things I want to do tomorrow, but I guess I'll just have to see how I'm doing in the morning. (We have covid tests still, they've all come back negative, but even "just a cold" is a miserable experience, ugh, so I'm attempting to avoid sharing it with the household or indeed anyone else.)

N is better, and I am clearly heading that way. 24-hour bug of some kind. So I will take it easy today and be ok for work tomorrow, plus a 2-day in-person management training on Tue & Wed.

Uni hockey is over for me now until mid-January, and I'm continuing to work on healing up my hamstring injury with daily exercises from the physio, and some very cautious skating. Next physio appointment is Thursday so hopefully I will have an idea of next steps after that.

I have set up my birthday present to myself for next year, which is a 5-day surfing course in Newquay in July. I'd been vaguely thinking about it since reading an article about an all-women surfing school on the Eurostar in August, and finally decided to do something about it. I've always loved to swim, and especially to swim in the sea, and surfing has always looked fun but I've never yet made time to give it a try. Anyway, I've now committed to this course and need to figure out travel and accommodation nearer the time.

I went down a bit of a rabbithole of potential train-based hockey-watching plans, with the discovery I can get from London to Stockholm in 24 hours thanks to the newish sleeper service from Hamburg. My main SDHL team is in Linköping, southwest of Stockholm, but I also really like Luleå's team, which is up in the far north of the country. It takes 48 hours to get to Luleå from London by train, with a day in Stockholm between sleeper services. Anyway, I spent a happy day or two looking at train timetables and the SDHL schedule, and costing things up. In the end I regretfully concluded that this was not a plan for the rest of the current SDHL season due to existing commitments between now and the end of March but I should seriously think about it for the start of next season in Sep/Oct next year. (Not least because average temps in Luleå in February are between -12°C and -2°C, whereas in September it's more like 3°C to 9°C.)

I have a cold. I am 99% sure it's a cold and not the plague, as my usual Friday LFT was negative, as was the PCR that ZOE sent me to get when I mentioned having a runny nose and sneezing.

I felt a bit rough on Friday, drank copious hot tea and honey and felt much better, and decided to go ahead with a planned family visit (including an overnight stay away from home), as we were mostly going to be outdoors and I have a good mask for when indoors. I felt fine for most of Saturday, bit tired Saturday evening, fine most of Sunday, bit tired Sunday evening, fine for about 3/4 of today, rather more tired tonight. Clearly family socialising and skating are both much less hard work than my day job!

The most tedious thing is I'm still doing twice-weekly symptom questionnaires for the Ensemble 2 trial, so of course when I admitted to having cold symptoms today, I then had to faff with taking my temperature and oxygen sats, including digging out the trial-supplied equipment to do so. And I'll have to do at least the oxygen sats three times tomorrow.

(I am still waiting for the trial to tell me it's ok to go ahead with getting the booster vaccine. They did send out a mass email today to say that some people have been turned away from getting boosters due to answering 'Yes' when asked if they were part of a vaccine trial, and that this shouldn't be happening. I think that is implicit approval to go ahead and book, but I chased them up for an explicit answer anyway. Also between the cold and a busy schedule this week, I probably want to wait a little anyway.)

I got a GP appointment on Tuesday morning because I was still feeling nowhere near better and it was day 8 off work. Among other things, he strongly recommended inhaling steam "as often as possible". I had been doing this intermittently but I started doing it every hour or two I was awake. By Wednesday afternoon I started feeling a lot better, and on Thursday I finally got back to work. I may of course have been about to get well anyway, but it's felt like a very dramatic recovery.

He also completely changed my understanding of how I should be treating cold symptoms.

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Yesterday afternoon I reached the stage of the cough where I feel like I will never ever be well again, I don't even remember what it's like not to have a cough, everything is awful and I am doomed to be sick and frail forever.   From experience, this means I will be over it in about 2 more days, 3 at most.  I'll still feel rotten for most of that time, but now I recognise this pattern it's much easier to cope with.

We had family tickets for a "Relaxed Performance" of a local pantomime today, but neither Tony nor I felt up to leaving the house, so none of us went. I got an apology email from the theatre this afternoon, which implies that one of the actors was either hurt or drastically unwell during the performance, meaning it had to be stopped part-way through.  I'm glad to read that the actor is "recovering well and being looked after", but I'm even more glad we didn't go; the children would have found the disruption distressing, and Tony and I would have been worried about the actor.  (And of course, the audience that seeks out a Relaxed Performance is even more likely than most to get upset by unexpected disruptions - what bad luck all round.)

Anyway, we are having an even more quiet and retiring seasonal holiday than planned, but thankfully the children seem happy enough and able to mostly keep themselves entertained.

The first week of school holidays; a big to-do list to get done at both home and work before Helsinki; in particular a big code push early on Tuesday morning.  I had a whole carefully worked-out schedule of when Tony and I would be at work and on leave and working from home and doing childcare runs.

Early on Monday morning, I woke up very suddenly and proceeded to have a very thorough stomach upset for much of the day.  My boss is the best boss, for taking over and sorting out my Tuesday work for me.  I had to reorganise the cleaner, and my routine bone marrow appointment due today (because taking a potential stomach bug into a ward of cancer patients is distinctly antisocial) and completely redo the who-is-home-when plan for the week.

But I was at least able to work today, and (fingers-crossed) I'll be back in the office tomorrow.

The most exciting thing this week has at least gone to plan so far.  My dad made a flying visit today to collect Nicholas for a long weekend at WOMAD. His first time away from home without a parent in tow; not his first time away from both parents though, and it should be a lot of fun for them both.  I look forward to hearing all about it on Monday.

0.5 days of the new school year, before Charles was sent home with a stomach bug.
36 more hours before he can go back (fingers-crossed he seems to be over it now).
12 hours today before my own stomach settled enough to eat something resembling a meal.
1 OU assignment submitted, 6 days before the deadline.
5.5 days to go until the exam in the other module.14 days before Nico also starts school.

I've just been ill, and busy, and ill some more.  Did you know that it's entirely typical for coughs to last up to three weeks? Well now I do.

Studying is mostly progressing in bitesize chunks; I've missed a few days while ill, but also picked up once my brain came back, so that's passed the first test of "is this really sustainable?".

My colleague's funeral had a very gratifying turnout; the funeral service itself focused heavily on the afterlife I don't believe in, but I drew a lot of comfort from fellow attendees, and exchanging stories at the wake.   Her family very kindly let me pick out some of her things from the flat they were clearing out.  I focused on books on topics we had in common and came away with more than I would have expected: I was amused when one of the business texts I'd picked out was referenced in my studying a few days later.  Now I just have to find time to read it before finishing the course.

Running is on hold until I stop coughing, which cannot happen soon enough.  Also I missed the 20th anniversary alt.fan.pratchett meet / Pratchett wake, but at least Tony and Charles got to go.

Eastercon is imminent; my mother-in-law arrived tonight and Tony and I will leave the children from Friday morning to Monday evening.  I've not even been away from Nico overnight yet; I have been away from Charles a few times for the length of a conference, but Tony was with him for all of them.  I am nervous and excited and hoping it all works out well.  Mobile phones make the prospect a lot more bearable.

Nico got sent home from nursery on Wednesday with a dodgy tum; Tony & I succumbed Thursday night and are nearly better now; Charles & Jonny just succumbed.  We are scrupulously observing the 48-hour rule before being social/going back to work/childcare.

I have been especially grateful for the new tumble-dryer as lots of bedding needed changing several times in close succession.  Only the waterproof undersheets can't go in it; Tony hung one of them on the line in yesterday's sunshine but forgot to bring it in before the night's rain.  There seems no point in bringing it in until the rain has stopped now.

After Charles spent Monday night/Tuesday morning waking me up, he continued to be fragile during Tuesday and Wednesday: very quiet and subdued most of the time, eating very little food (though drinking plenty of water), nursing hugely in the evenings, and by yesterday, running a temperature. All manageable but concerning, and by Wednesday evening my mama-sense was twanging and I insisted on him seeing a doctor yesterday. (Also we're off to see Tony's father in France on Saturday, and we're a bit sore on the subject of Charles, illness and missing holidays.)

The doctor was very good with him and after taking a history and his temperature, looked in his ear and said "yes, it's an ear infection". Apparently it's quite nasty - if it were milder, they wouldn't bother prescribing anything as there's no way of knowing if it's viral or bacterial, but as it's nasty, it's worth trying antibiotics because if it is bacterial he'll get well very quickly.

I felt justified in following my instincts (which I prefer to think of as the brain's excellent pattern-spotting acting on the vast database of Charles-observations I've accumulated in the last two years).

The antibiotic is in liquid form: bright yellow artificial-banana-flavour liquid. Charles let us dose him without too much trouble, but immediately asked for a feed ("Mummy-more NOW?"), presumably to take the vile taste away.

(New phrase yesterday: "That dunt work".)

Charles was ill late last night, so we have given up on the holiday. We are off work until Friday, so have plenty of time to see Charles get better, if Tony and I manage not to go mad in the meantime. We are trying hard not to be too grumpy but the fact remains we are quite bored, isolated and frustrated. Tony has managed to do some work from home and I've been escaping into some favourite books. My diary is still missing, which is really bugging me, but I haven't yet been able to devote enough time to an intensive search of the house.

Signals are mixed as to how Charles is doing: he is almost back to his normal self in personality, but he is also noticeably thinner, sticking-out ribs and weedy limbs. He is still sick at least twice a day. He has lost at least half a kilo (from a starting point of approx 12kg). I have never been more grateful for being able to breastfeed him, and for not making any push to stop him; at the moment I think I'm his primary source of nutrition and fluids, though we are trying to get plain food and dilute juice into him as well.

We will take him back to the doctor tomorrow.

Until about 3pm I would have reported that we were all tired but slowly recovering. Tony and I were gingerly expanding our range of food, and re-discovering appetites, while Charles seemed better if rather quiet and subdued. I was cautiously thinking of joining the Great Party Holiday on Saturday, in time for the big Saturday-night Surprise Event.

And then Charles threw up again, completely unexpectedly. He was much perkier afterwards, at least for a while, so I suspect his earlier lassitude was down to him feeling pretty rotten.

The end-of-quarantine clock is now reset to 3ish on Saturday, which means we can't get down to the party in time for the Surprise Event, so may as well leave travelling until Sunday.

It also means he's been ill for over 72 hours so I was back on the phone to NHS Direct, who said "hmm, yes, that is a bit unusual, but if he's not showing any of [list of scary symptoms] then probably not worth seeing a doctor today. If he throws up again in the next day, you should probably get on to your surgery, or of course if he gets worse in any way."

Tony and I are both a bit grumpy: probably a mixture of mild cabin-fever, convalescence, and holiday-disappointment. Not being able to properly finish at work in preparation for leave isn't helping my mood either.

We take the 48-hour rule very seriously: it's most likely that Charles caught this bug from someone who wasn't following it, and we wouldn't wish to inflict the misery we've had on anyone else. Taking it to a large house-party (including 3 other young children) would be incredibly antisocial, no matter how grumpy and disappointed we are.

I am going to tempt fate and look up Sunday trains to Minehead. To be honest, if we can't travel on Sunday, we may have bigger things to worry about :(

Charles developed a mild fever during Thursday night and so on Friday we kept him home and Tony worked a half-day so I could go to work. The fever responded well to infant paracetamol but he was fairly clingy and desperately thirsty much of the day and night.

We decided in the end that Tony & Louise would go to Sheffield by train, and attempt to amend the railcard tickets at the station (thanks lnr for that idea!). Conrad can come back on my ticket. Overall we probably won't be much out of pocket. I rang the B&B to let them know it would just be Tony, but it turned out they were full and unable to move him to a cheaper room.

This morning Charles was no longer feverish. But still very clingy and tired, so after 2 minutes consideration I decided not to pack hurriedly and go along at the last minute after all. I felt more down than I expected when we waved them off though. I was really looking forward to seeing people, and I already know Charles and I won't be at the next big Finch gathering (it clashes with the Wychwood festival).

These last two weeks I have been very glad that I can still breastfeed Charles.

Charles and I have been well since Thursday afternoon. (This 48-hour thing is very sensible - Charles twice went 36 hours between bouts before finally getting well.) Tony managed to avoid being ill altogether. Jonny succumbed Friday but I think is better now.

On Saturday we spent the afternoon with arnhem and L, and I was introduced to the Ukulele Orchestra DVD while Tony spent quality time with L's lego. I was meant to go out for a meal celebrating my friend's escape from ex-work but by the time I needed to leave I was far too tired so wimped out.

On Sunday we made an excellently productive shopping trip into town, for the three Finch birthdays this month and a few other errands. Sunday shopping in Cambridge is almost bearable although we did seem to keep orbiting John Lewis and the not-quite-finished Grand Arcade. Yippee on King Street is fairly child-friendly and Charles approves of noodles.

I am still falling asleep around 8-9pm most evenings (today being an obvious exception), but now mostly avoiding the midnight insomnia. I will assume I just need to sleep a lot, and try not to resent losing evenings with Tony.

Charles greeted James's return from Australia with terrified screams and a tantrum demonstration.

Our cleaner is lovely but just as we are settling into a good routine she is going to miss 4 weeks due to Easter hols and a trip home to her mother. I will try to encourage myself and the other adult residents not to let the place slip back into squalor in the meantime.

Charles's quarantine extended to 23:50 on Thursday.

I got something like 4 hours sleep this time. Tony slept in the other room again and got more. Charles seemed happier this morning but very very unhappy about me leaving for work.

I seriously considered getting the pump out this morning so I could leave him some expressed milk, but in the end couldn't face the hassle. Plain food and water while I'm gone, I think.

Being up all night nursing a vomiting child.

I cannot tell now whether I feel sick because I'm also ill but less badly, or because I've spent the night snatching sleep in 20-30min increments. Either way, I am enacting quarantine on the Plague Child and myself until we both seem to be better.

Tony spent the night in a different room to encourage sleep, and is probably not plagueridden, so I may let him go to work later.

Well, the headache passed after a while and I think what I have is a nasty cold rather than a migraine. I spent a lot of yesterday dozy and thirsty and hungry (so rested and drank and ate), and got a few bits and bobs done. By evening I really had to get a move on with preparing an application to the Societies Syndicate for grants on behalf of CUMC as the deadline for submission is today. I woke up to my responsibilities as Junior Treasurer about a week ago and thanks to our excellent Secretary and Gear Secretary I got all the figures together on Wednesday after a spurt of work on Monday and Tuesday evenings, but it took me about 3 hours to put the applications together last night. Never, ever, ever leave things to the last minute, that way you don't have to do them while ill. This morning I had arranged to meet with the Senior Treasurer, a lovely Professor in Pathology, to collect his counter-signature and then I dropped the envelope into the Old Schools. This mild exercise left me shaking and exhausted, so I returned home rather than going into work, and called in sick again.

I'm fine now, so long as I sit still, consume quantities of water and eat about every hour. Don't ask me to think about complicated things quickly.

I seem to be going through another growth spurt: last week most of my knickers stopped fitting, the week before that my swimming costume, and now all but the baggiest of my non-maternity tshirts are too snug. My weight is now around 92-93 kg, about 3 more than when I got pregnant, and up in the last couple of weeks from a long steady hover around 91kg. eBay is brilliant now I know roughly what size I am in various brands: I have managed to find a decent swimsuit, a good stockist of maternity briefs (one has a choice between pants cut to fit below the bump, or over it - in summer I think I do not need the extra layer), two pairs of maternity jeans are on their way which should bring me up to 4 decent pairs of trousers and an emergency spare, and am beginning to look for tops - they seem harder to find in bundles which is what I want for simplicity. I may post a Wanted to freecycle - bundles of maternity wear do get offered on there from time to time, but not yet in my size that I've noticed. I've got more stuff to Offer as well.

One thing I did yesterday was order a batch of reading material on childbirth from the NCT online shop. I find myself with an urge to find out as much as possible about labour, birth, waterbirths and c-sections, even though we're weeks from needing to start birth-plan discussions with the midwife. If it arrives in time, Tony can take it to Kenya to read on the plane. The plan is that by the time we get to the actual birth, Tony and I will have researched and discussed most things that could happen and worked out our contingency plans. What I want is a straightforward non-medicalised labour, but the baby or my body may not cooperate and I think its best to have plans B, C and D if necessary. Also to have someone other than me that knows them because in the worse scenarios I may literally not be able to speak for myself.

With this on my mind, I also attempted to book Tony and I into antenatal classes. The local NCT co-ordinator said they were still confirming details with the local teacher, but a course suitable for my due date should be confirmed soon, most likely in Hardwick. When I mentioned lack-of-car she said usually they manage to arrange liftshares so not to worry. She took my name, due date and mobile number and added me to her waiting list, so I hope we'll be able to get on the course.

Nothing else very interesting happened except that the co-op had a sad lack of houmous.

I got let out this afternoon. Actually, I got told I could come out this morning, but it took ages for the hospital pharmacy to prepare my drugs. I dozed quite a lot of the time though, so it wasn't exactly wasted. I am now almost without pain, but easily tired and frequently sleepy. I'm going to talk to my GP tomorrow as I think I probably shouldn't go back to work until at least after the weekend, and I've now been away from work for nearly a week so need a note to do that. Tony's mother suggests even longer off, but I'll see what the GP thinks.

My ultrasound scan showed nothing wrong at all - no cysts on the ovaries, Mirena in the right place. However, pumping me full of antibiotics at regular intervals has steadily reduced the pain since I was admitted on Monday evening, to the point where I'm no longer needing any pain relief. The consultant this morning concluded that my pain was being caused by an infection not among those commonly swabbed for, and as many-antibiotics were getting me well, they should send me home with a course of many-antibiotics. At the moment they are leaving my Mirena in, and if this clears up with no further problems they will probably leave it there. The Daphne Ward should make a follow-up call in four to six weeks, so I need to keep an eye on things between now and then.

I have doxycycline to take twice a day, metronidazole to take three times a day and cefalexin to take four times a day. I can neither drink alcohol, nor spend long in the sun as a result. I am drawing little charts in my diary to tick off so as to keep track. The nurses were doing this for me through the IV while I was inside, but I definitely prefer not having a canula in my hand, despite the extra tracking effort on my part. The antibiotics were cold going in ...

So, my diagnosis is "?subacute pelvic inflammatory disease", with advice to go back if it starts hurting again. We found a leaflet on pelvic inflammatory disease, which turns out to mean "infection that causes inflammation in the pelvic area". Among other things it does advise that sexual partners get checked out too - which I guess is obvious once you think about it. Due to a cancellation Tony was able to get an appointment at Clinic 1A today and as a precaution, they've given him a course of antibiotics too (if not as many as me), so we can rattle together.

NHS Direct told me to ring my GP and/or their emergency cover service. My GP's number got picked up by CamDoc, where a nice nurse took my story and got a doctor to ring back. The doctor rang back some time later, and told me to come in to the Chesterton Medical Centre, and was deeply unsympathetic to the suggestion that this might be difficult as I could barely walk. As it seemed I'd get seen by a medical professional sooner if I got myself there, I sighed and asked Amy to drive Tony and I there. Not fun. The Medical Centre has a huge waiting room full of people staring at me as I failed to manage sitting on a chair and settled for sprawling across the floor. Which was hard.

Eventually I was called. The doctor had a student doctor in tow, who led the consultation with him hovering. She was pretty good and I was beyond caring very much at that point. I ran through the medical history for them, including how much I didn't want another examination, and they checked my temperature to discover I had a fever. Which was interesting as I hadn't had one on Thursday. They suspected salpingitis (inflammation of the fallopian tubes) caused by an infection, which was also causing the fever. The senior doctor said that the swabs taken on Thursday might not show up some infections for a couple of days, i.e. right about then. He then rather apologetically said that they really did need to examine me to be sure.

So I let them. It was awful. They had to move my cervix to confirm that it was my reproductive system that was hurting. I gave them confirmation. Thankfully Tony was very nearby and came to hold me the moment they had finished.

This done, they prescribed me extra-strong antibiotics, at three pills per day, and I was instructed to take three pills over the remainder of the day, to hit whatever the infection was as hard as possible. This should reduce the pain, but if there was no improvement in 18 hours, I was to call the emergency line again. Tony called Amy who fetched us home, settled me in bed and went off to fill the prescription and generally looked after me all evening, during which time I did start to improve a bit. This morning I was very definitely much better, in that the painkillers are keeping the pain bearable and I can move around and sit upright relatively easy.

I can definitely manage until tomorrow like this, and tomorrow is when I was told to call the Daphne Ward back about the ultrasound. I still want that, because I want to be absolutely sure what is going on, and fix it, before I go back to work.

Painkillers seem to be doing a reasonable job. I had no difficulty walking the length of Richmond Road to catch the bus into town for the migraine follow-up appointment, but was glad that was as far as I had to go. The appointment was very simple and routine - my doc made the necessary prescription, ran through the COLMC recommendations with me and suggested the quickest way for me to see a physio was to go to a self-help group based at the Buchan St Neighbourhood Centre, somewhere off King's Hedges Road. I caught the bus back to Richmond Road and was home again soon after 9am. The walk back from the bus stop became gradually less comfortable, so I'm not likely to go far today unless I have to.

I rang into work to let them know I'd work at home and I might be called back into the hospital for a scan. About twenty minutes after that, Dr Li, the nice ob/gyn from yesterday, rang me. All my swabs and blood samples have come back clear and there is no need for antibiotics. She's sent a request form to the radiology department and how long it takes me to get a scan depends on their prioritisation and other requests coming in. She suspects probably not today, but she'll ring me if so. I should probably ring the ward on Monday if I haven't heard anything, but it's likely to be sometime Monday-Wednesday next week.

I've worked out that the Citi 7 bus goes from opposite the Iceland/Aldi, all of three minutes walk away, to the stop opposite the main entrance to the Rosie. This is probably about as easy a journey as I can manage on public transport, and runs from before 7am to after 10pm. If I don't get a scan until next week and I'm feeling well enough to get to work, there's always the free bus from near-work to Addenbrookes' main entrance. If I'm well enough to reach work, I'll be well enough to walk through the site to the Rosie.

On Saturday night my aunt Lucinda was celebrating her 50th birthday in Langley, a little village near Macclesfield, on the edge of the Peak District. It wasn't going to be possible to get to and from the party without a car, and it was also difficult to find anywhere to stay very nearby. So I decided to rent a car, and then to make a virtue out of the necessity and find interesting, non-motorway, routes there and back.
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Despite an easy evening, I woke up shattered, stuffed-up and sore-eyed. It only took about an hour of wrestling guilt to decide to call in sick. I am really trying to work on my less helpful macho reactions to bodily weakness, especially after the mess I made last week of what should have been a minor 1-afternoon migraine.