I am sitting in the taxi feeling grumpy about Bat Flu.
It has become impossible to so much as clear my throat without customers shrieking with horror and practically clawing their way over to the somehow more plague-protected safety of the back seats. I do not have a dry cough, but some of my tea went down the wrong way earlier on and I was practically forced into exile on the spot.
Having said that I have just had a group of middle-aged gentlemen on a Boys Only weekend who explained that they had been licking everything in the hope that they might catch it and be forced to isolate themselves in their lakeside holiday cottage, leaving their wives and children to fend for themselves back at home. They did not seem to view two weeks of fishing on the lake and surviving on deliveries of pizza and beer from Tesco as an undesirable outcome in the least.
In fact most of my customers seem largely untroubled, and apart from a secret longing for something excitingly dramatic to happen, are getting on with their lives as normal.
A young female from Manchester announced that she thought it was tactless of Boris Johnson to tell us that we were all going to die, which surprised me somewhat. Another lady, who seemed to be having a disagreement with her boyfriend, told me that she hoped the football would be cancelled for ever. Apart from that, most people seem to be sufficiently supplied to wipe their bottoms in comfort for the next few weeks, and are facing the future without much anxiety.
It has been a bit of a difficult sort of day in any case, partly because it did not start off very well.
Mark had a call last night begging him to rush off to somewhere miles away where they have installed rural broadband, and where it had inexplicably ceased to function.
Ted is not about at the moment, and was of the opinion in any case that probably somebody had switched it off, so it had to be Mark.
He did not go last night because he was at work here, but we set the alarm for this morning. We were halfway through a bleary-eyed, far-too-early coffee when the phone rang.
Of course they had fixed the switch problem, and their broadband was working just splendidly, but we were up by then, and the tone of the day was set.
I do not function terribly well when I have not had sufficient sleep.
I did not function terribly well.
I managed the washing, and to bring in the firewood which Mark was cutting in the yard, but that was just about the full extent of my achievements.
I washed pots and put things away and fed the dogs and tried to concentrate on domestic things, without much success.
Eventually I realised that the fuzzy sensation was the beginning of a headache, and some drugs helped the day progress along much better.
It is still hovering now, which is partly why this is a bit short.
Have a picture of a tail.
