Grey

Well, the throat infection that has given me a voice that sounds like a pubescent lad and the cough that I've been struggling to ignore for the last two days finally blossomed today on the plane back to Istanbul.  I am assuming that the variable pressure and range of temperatures in airport and plane played their part in exacerbating the symptoms that gave me an extremely uncomfortable flight rendering me almost unable to breathe and trying to cough unobtrusively. The tickly kind where the more you try to suppress it, the louder it will eventually erupt.  Usually attacks in concerts.  Especially during the solo.  In Istanbul the passport queue was long and hot and uncomfortable and once again, the officers queried my papers where eventually, as they had on Wednesday, but more kindly, it was once again agreed that there was indeed, nothing wrong with my papers but it took long enough to sort  that I missed the bus and had to take a later one.  (I must enquire at school why I had this problem both leaving and entering the country this time.) Coach transfer from the airport and taxi ride last stage home was just plain awful - too embarrassed to breathe as I couldn't do it quietly, face turned to the window and wrapped in my scarf in some attempt to keep my germs to myself.  Once home,  having finally managed to drag my luggage up four flights of stairs, I opened the suitcase, put the 6kg of mature cheddar (!) I brought back, in to the fridge along with the veggie sausages; gave Elizabeth and Caroline their "English cat food" holiday gift (Harry is on staycation downstairs with neighbours) and then went to bed to rattle and snort and cough and occasionally breathe through the night. 

(The photograph is the Windmill bar at Stansted airport, during a pint of Doom Bar - easily the highlight of the day - and is the only photo I took on this otherwise grey and miserable day, uploaded a day late now that I am feeling almost human.)