On a roll…

So then my tooth implant falls out and the pellet-fired central heating decides to ignore the thermostat and go on the rampage

. In the last two days we’ve changed our Easter flight booking twice .

But I’ve turned a corner and the various expectorants - cough mixture, steam inhalations, T tree oil, Potters cough pastilles and Max Strength Lemsip have had an impact in as much as the wracking coughing is recalcitrantly productive (like hen’s teeth) and I’ve managed to sleep.

My great consolation other than the food and drinks brought to me by The Boss who is only now getting over the same affliction has been listening to Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks on Audible (the John Rintoul reading). Great value if you buy your books by the hours of listening. Ridiculous that he wrote it when between 22 and 26 years old. A four generation story of a Lübeck merchant family in the nineteenth century. Well worth reading Colm Toibin’s ‘The Magician’ before or after. I’m now onto the Magic Mountain - nothing like a novel set in a Swiss alpine TB sanitarium before antibiotics to lift the bronchitis recovery spirits. And a poignant reminder of my dad’s time after serving in the navy in the IIWW in a TB sanitarium. He lost most of a lung, had a small navy pension and wore his privation lightly. And it recurred. But then he was saved by penicillin.

Maybe speaks to my fear of anything on my chest.

It weighs in at 35 hours of listening - The Magic Mountain, that is.