Autumn Road

Uploading this on Saturday 5th November, so if I get tenses and so on muddled up, please forgive me!

Today went rather wrong. It started OK, but certainly didn't end as planned. I got up feeling rather well, having eventually caught up with a bit of sleep, and was all lined up for a productive day. After dropping the Wonderspouse off at the bus, I came home and did a couple of hours productive work at my desk, sorting jobs that needed doing and so on.

Then I headed out. I was going to pick up a hamster cage I'd "won" on ebay for just 99p (I'm giving Laura a bit more space - home improvement for hamsters). I successfully found the house, collected the cage, paid the man (who was selling it on behalf of his daughter - she'd had a couple of dwarfs, which had fought, so she'd ended up with an extra cage, and had got fed up with looking after them in any case, so when the last one died had decided to sell the cage).

Then I decided to stop off in the nearby town for a snack and a drink. I suspect this was, ultimately, a BAD idea.

After doing a bit of shopping - a magazine and a rat calendar for next year - I had a sandwich and then a coffee. I then drove home, stopping to take this picture on the way.

I sat on the sofa and rested briefly, then got up in order to go and get on with my work. My head felt swimmy. I felt very very ill all of a sudden, and from that moment all plans were off.

I spent the next couple of hours or so in the bathroom, too ill even to get to a phone to tell anyone how ill I was. I'll spare you the grisly details, since it was seriously grim. Sweat was also pouring off me, like some sort of dying heroine in a costume drama (except that I wasn't in a four-poster bed, or attended by my family, but curled up on the bathmat and watched over by assorted rubber ducks, a family of bath frogs, a plastic alligator and a bubble bath filled Stig).

Once I was able to get to a phone I called the Wonderspouse. He said he'd walk home, and told me to call the doctor if I got any worse.

At least if he came home and found me dead on the bathroom floor, he'd been warned.

After about another hour I was able to get to my study and call my tutor (it was becoming obvious that there would be no college or teaching the next day). She was sympathetic, which was good.

A few hours later I had a very quick bath, got into my dressing gown, and went to bed. Everything in chaos, work undone, but I was at least alive.

I can't remember much else, just that I felt VERY VERY VERY ill.