Keeping up

It was all the hospital's fault that I havent been blogging. That's what I'd like to think and what I'd like you to think, but we all know this isn't true because, short of tying my hands or keeping me sedated, it really is not possible for a hospital, however technically advanced, to stop you doing much you really want to do - in the intellectual sense, that is: I can't see them allowing, for instance, kick-boxing or abseiling. Anyway, I have had a short stay in hospital without my laptop which, on a scale of one to ten unpleasant, where ten is the least pleasant, comes out at about four hundred and thirty four. (The stay, not the laptop) You don't want to know the details, or, if you do, they wouldn't add much to your pleasure in the blog, only spoil your supper, but, believe me, unpleasant is it. The problem was that the stay was followed by days at home when I suffered a sort of reaction. I had a high temperature and much aching with no sore throat or any other nicely identifiable flu-like symptoms. When referred to the G.P., bless his heart, the symptoms were diagnosed as the reaction of a very cross body. Quite. (Now, as you will have noticed, I don't really approve of non-sentences, but "quite" is what does it for me in these circumstances and I promise to be more forgiving of other peoples' slipshod sentences in future). Fortunately, nothing untoward emerged from the unpleasantness, so there the matter ends, Deo Gratis

When I finally got myself together to get up, stay up and put some proper clothes on, I was appalled at the accumulation of jobs undone. There was your predictable pile of envelopes to be binned or paid; nothing warm and friendly other than a flyer indicating that some friends would be giving a recital in a nearby church in a few days' time. How did I keep up with all this when I was also working, I asked myself? There's no doubt that there is a mathematical equation somewhere that expressess the distribution of time in ratio to brown envelopes. Perhaps, the busier you are, the more of them you can deal with: work expands etc., but I do believe it is more complex than that. There simply is more time, the egg-timer is bigger, the clock has more minutes when you have lots to do. I made a resolution to keep absolutely up to date with my desk and my life from now on. After all, at my age, you never know when 'WHEN I come out of hospital', may turn in to 'IF I come out of hospital'. Let's express it like this: a cupboard a day keeps chaos at bay. ( I swear, that phrase came totally unbidden from my inner voice so it must be true). Someone I am close to has spent a month in isolated retreat while all this was going on for me. Not so very different, spiritual or physical tidy -up followed by a difficult and busy period of re-entry. He hasn't come back to too many brown envelopes but SOMEONE HAS TIDIED HIS OFFICE and now he can't find a thing. So what's new. See you before long.