I have had a tiresome couple of days.
There are dozens of achievements still lurking frustratingly out of my reach, because I have been slowed to barely more than a crawl by an unexpected headache.
It is the sort of headache that is accorded gravitas by being referred to as a Migraine. This means that it makes me feel slightly nauseous all the time, and my vision has become peculiarly unsynchronised. If you imagine the sort of awful modern film where the director has decided not to allow the camera to slide smoothly along its dolly rails but has dispatched the cameraman to jog along after the protagonists with the camera balanced on his shoulder, usually as they flee from some terrible peril like a pro-Brexit bureaucrat, then you will have an idea of what I mean. It is mildly disorientating and also irritating.
I had enough good intentions to get me halfway to Hell this weekend, all sorts of things should have been done by now and have been avoided whilst I have been wallowing in headachy self-pity. This is wicked of me, because I am trying to clear the decks in order that I can start writing my new story. It is set on another planet, and I do not want to be trying to concentrate on inter-Galactic difficulties whilst a large pile of ironing is sitting on the bottom of the children’s stairs, tugging remorselessly at my guilty conscience.
I have not yet done the ironing. Indeed, yesterday afternoon I was so wearied just by the very thought of it that I gave in to the headache and crawled back into bed. I had thought a little earlier that perhaps I might do this, and had put the electric blanket back on in hopeful anticipation. This made it the most wonderful shirk, and I was asleep in seconds, almost before I had chance to appreciate the glorious warm loveliness of it.
I am on the taxi rank now. I should reassure you that at least I have not shirked out of work. I have been drugging myself into an almost painless, albeit rather zombiefied state, and am determinedly applying myself to earning a living. This is requiring some determination. I would like very much to slope off back to bed, but I am being self-controlled.
I am still a Person of Virtue, really.
I did not go back to bed this afternoon. Instead I resolved to Do Better. I swallowed handfuls of drugs and swept the trails of yard-sawdust out of the kitchen and conservatory. Then I stacked the chairs on the table and watered the flower beds.
I noticed, rather guiltily, that one or two napkins from Christmas dinner were still stuck down the side of the sofa, it might be a while since I have cleared up in there.
There was hardly any rat poo behind the conservatory sofa, and the little that there was had become so desiccated that it seemed unlikely that there had been any fresh rats for some time.
I swept it all up and mopped everywhere with bleach.
Not a trace of rattiness remains anywhere, and the poor neglected plants are wiggling their roots blissfully in the newly damp, fresh soil. The kitchen smells fresh, no rat-corpse fragrances hanging about now. Instead, there is a faint scent of dried oranges from the drying machine lingering in the air.
It will be nice to come home to later on.
Not only that, but I have also managed to fill a charity bag with clothes with which I have now done the opposite of outgrowing. Somebody poked this bag through the letterbox the other day, requesting that I filled it with unwanted clothes and left it on the doorstep.
I had to think very carefully about this. If I get fat again then I will feel very sorry if I have given away all of my Size Sixteen trousers, but they are taking up so much space in the wardrobe that there is no room for my new Size Ten trousers, and I have been having something of a dilemma about what to do.
In the end I bundled up all the ones that I didn’t like quite so much and stuffed them in the bag, which, I noticed, was then very full indeed. I have saved the ones that I do like, so at least if I do get fat again then I will have lots of my favourite clothes to wear, so there will be a silver lining.
There is some space in the wardrobe again.
Our house is turning into a nicer and nicer place all the time.
Despite the headache I am having a very happy January.
I will do the ironing tomorrow.
