Finn's Parlour

I passed a night largely without sleep - the second in succession - as a result of a persistent cough and wheezing lungs that made every outbreath a protracted rattle reminiscent of an anxious puppy desperate to be admitted to the bedroom.   Giving up on the idea of sleep in the small hours of the morning I rose and walked out of my house.    Bats playing in the gaps between buildings - I always am bewitched by the tumbling complexity of their flight and the way they catch insects in the folds of their wings and tail before transferring them to their mouths like a miserly child popping in a sweet he doesn't want anyone else to see.

I wish I believed in an afterlife, but I just can't.   There was a time, a brief time that I did and it was accompanied by a lasting low grade euphoria of meaningfulness and an optimistic assurance that all would work out for the best.   The feeling was nice, and I can understand how it can become addictive, but I cannot trick myself into belief once again.   Like Disneyland it was a fun place to visit but I would hate to have to think it was real.   Perhaps the old tales  have it best - Deyr fé, deyja frændr, deyr sjálfr et sama; ek veit einn, at aldri deyr: dómr of dauðan hvern.    It is the reputation that one leaves behind that is immortal, the one thing that cannot die.

Egyptian religion had a lovely get-out clause by the way, for the departed soul.   After all the business at Osiris' throne with the weighing of the soul's heart against the feather of Ma'at, there was for the condemned a final chance - if one person remaining on Earth would regret the passing of that person they were spared destruction.  One person could make all that difference.   Mind you, the Egyptians took death very seriously indeed.

I'm tired - exhausted in fact - and fed up of being ill.   Other people have it far worse and I have more good things around me than I deserve, but right at this moment, in this single shining drop of time I am absolutely bloody dejected.   A good night's sleep is probably all I need to reboot my sense of proportion and put the raving brain into neutral, but that good night's sleep seems a long way away.  Still I can at least amuse myself at the thought that it is Halloween tonight, so I may well get to enjoy some bloody-minded fun and scare some Trick or Treaters in revenge for them copying US cultural traditions ("their country has only existed for less than three hundred years.  They don't have traditions, they have habits") rather than celebrating their own.

Oh and fireworks.  Once the sole night of the year when fireworks could be seen was November the Fifth.. now with the rise of the commercial instinct they go on sale weeks earlier so I am subjected to what sound like mortar attacks and anti aircraft gunnery each evening from late October to Late November.   The trend is not for nice pretty pyrotechnic displays anymore but for loud bangs, preferably repeated ones.   

Bah.   I need that sleepy reboot.   Or at the very least to download myself into organic hard drives in the hope of achieving some measure of peaceful immortality in that way.

I had a very disturbed night on Friday night/Saturday morning - waking at about 3am and unable to sleep again for a couple of hours.   That I think was not so much a primary symptom of the flu, but because the flu had made me so exhausted on Friday that I had slept a lot during the day and it had thrown my cycles out.

So I forced myself to stay awake all Saturday so that I could have  decent rest, and that seemed to work.   I was still wheezy and hot (though when is Finn ever not hot eh ladies?  *poses*) but I got a full night's sleep and woke up on Sunday feeling a lot better.  Temperature has dropped a little and I was feeling an improvement in other areas too.

I decided to go for a walk, just to the shop at the end of the street to pick up some supplies and that turned out to be a mistake.  It's not far at all, but by the time I got there I was exhausted and sweating.   I purchased what I needed as quickly as I could and came back home, flaking out on the couch straight away.   This is frustrating, it seems that the road to recovery may be a longer one than I had hoped.   

Yesterday I started feeling unwell as I drove to work.  I had awoken with a headache and feeling exhausted.  As I drove to work I became aware of a higher than normal temperature  and a tickly cough.

My boss who is a caring individual (he hired Finn after all, which places him up there with Jean Valjean in my opinion) spotted that I was unwell and after learning I had a temperature suggested I go home and get myself checked out for swine flu.

The UK you see is having somewhat of a panic about this strain of the flu.  In my opinion the media has been told to push it in order to distract us from government shenanigans, but Finn has always been a cynical devil.   I resisted getting myself checked out as I am well aware that the symptoms of a normal cold are pretty similar so the chances are I'd be told I had it whether I did or not!

DAMMIT, I hate being a statistic!

Today I became one.   The cough and sore throat are a little worse but not much (I've had far worse) but the worrying things are the high temperature and the overall fatigue and weakness in the limbs.   I got checked out, got the inevitable "Yes, pigsniffles it is" and my unique one of a kind, one time only serial number to go get some tamiflu.   Which I was not allowed to get myself since I am supposed to shun unnecessary human contact* so I had to get a flu-buddy to go get it for me armed with my identification and so on.

Is it Swine Flu?   I don't know.   But I am fed up with it already and I am only on my second day of it.   I shall keep you all posted.

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* You will forgive the maniacal laughter at this point