The day did not start very well.
We were not very late finishing last night, but we still did not make it to bed until almost three, and at half past six I was awoken by an extremely unpleasant throbbing at the back of my mouth.
It was not toothache. The top of my mouth had swollen up. There was a large bubble of something unpleasant just above my tongue.
This has been happening on and off for the last few days, but has usually dispersed with headache tablets and whisky, and so I have not wasted a very great deal of thought on the problem, Christmas already being entirely occupied with more important matters.
This morning it showed no signs of dispersing. I sat up in bed, hoping that the bubble would drain away, which it didn’t.
It pressed on everything in my face and hurt.
I fed myself drugs, liberally, which made no difference.
By eight o’clock my stoicism had run out and I called the GP. I had to be quite stroppy with the receptionist, who told me that I ought to try the chemist first before I bothered the poor overworked doctor. I said that I had already taken the maximum possible strength of drugs that I could get from the chemist, as well as some that you can’t get from the chemist without a prescription, and that I wanted to abuse the NHS, thanks.
By half past nine I was clutching a box full of antibiotics, so that was pretty good, the receptionist must have managed to fob everybody else off.
Mark was still asleep so I collected the dogs and we went off over the fells. I have not done this for ages, and it was a joy, despite the throbbing inside my head. It was very misty, and utterly, silently still, black with greasy mud and sodden bracken, as if the fells were also exhausted and battered after a frenetic Christmas season.
It was nice to be out, especially since I had taken enough drugs to make any self-respecting GP start talking about rehabilitation clinics. Better still, as I walked the bubble slowly diminished, draining away until it was a squishy cushion instead of an oral inner tube.
Mark woke up not long after I got back, and we had a cup of coffee, which tasted so horrible that I had to abandon it halfway through. I hung up the washing and crawled into bed, leaving him to rehome the poopies. They have been imprisoned on a plastic sheet in the upstairs hallway over Christmas, because it is out of the way. This has not been terribly kind, but it has preserved them from being squished under a stampede of cooking frenzy and visitors, and today, all festive flapping being concluded, we moved them back downstairs. They have been relocated in the conservatory, where they have got the whole easily-moppable floor upon which to leak, and also where we can’t hear them squeaking and squabbling, which they do rather noisily, in the middle of the night.
I woke up with a disgusting taste in my mouth and a massively diminished bubble, which appeared to have burst. This was unspeakably revolting so we will not go into details, although I am sorry to say it appears to have regrouped since, and is beginning to fill my mouth again, I hope the antibiotics start working soon. Still, it meant that I had the rest of the afternoon without needing to worry about self-pity, and I got on with a pile of replacement cooking.
I cooked sausages, beef burgers and pancakes, and made a not-very-fattening egg cake and some sushi. This took most of the afternoon, even with Mark helpfully washing up after me. I was grateful for this, there was a lot of washing up.
At six we all three packed an evening picnic and trailed off out to work, which is where I am at the moment. Mark is on the other side of the taxi rank and Oliver is standing outside the pub across the road, where he seems to be looking suspiciously at somebody’s driving licence.
We seem to be back to normal.
This is the last bit of normal for ages. In a few days it will be New Year, and after that there will be almost no work for weeks and weeks, until everybody has repaid their credit cards and recovered from their hangovers.
We will not mind.
I think we have earned a few weeks’ hibernation.
