Since I arrived back in Charmouth last Friday afternoon I have spent most of the time asleep. Some cold or flu-type bug hit me so I decided to ride it out rather than run for the anti-biotics. It has worked in the past and it is a few years now since I have had to resort to the pills.
Through Sunday night the symptoms were still escalating so when I awoke on Monday morning I decided that the time had come for me TO DO SOMETHING. So I rang one of the two medical practices in the village. Engaged the first three times but at the fourth attempt I got through to a human being. (No automated message, thank God.) They were fully booked today, she told me, but she could fit me in at 9.15 AM on Tuesday. I settled for that and had another nap.
Monday night was not as bad as Sunday and I was feeling almost cheerful when I arrived in the doctor’s consulting room. First, my temperature. He picked up his electronic thermometer, pressed a few buttons, then shook it. Finally apologised that he did not have his old one handy. But neither of us needed an instrument to know that my temperature was neither dangerously high or low.
His stethoscope worked and he declared that I had a chest infection. There was a bug doing the rounds and it fitted my symptoms precisely. They would have no effect on the infection so I did not need to take them. Unless I started spitting up green as well as my present production of white and light yellow.
Today the symptoms seem to be gradually receding. And I have had not a bad day but the inactivity has made me aware that I have been in a depressive phase for several days now. Triggered, as is usual, by several factors.
Sitting out on the terrace just now I decided that I should write about it. But still I did not move from my chair. What’s it like? As if my pen is anchored a Sisyphus like stone.
That absurdity did get my out of my chair and at the computer. But from this vantage point it does not seem so absurd. There is no pleasure in my writing. And I do feel a bit like he must have felt pushing that stone up the hill, with the growing realisation that he was never going to get there.
Just like me now, because I have totally forgotten what the end of this blog was going to be. But I do remember that what got me out of my chair was gazing at the sunset. The sky was tinged with pink. It was under-stated sunset, a sharp contrast to the spectacular blazing dawn, a picture of which accompanied the last blog I wrote on 22 October.
Looking at this sunset I realised that I was feeling a deep melancholy. And melancholy is not the same as depression so just how it differs would take more than a blog to consider.
So if I survive the bugs and the glooms my next post is likely to be around the issues raised by David Leigh’s lecture at City University, The End of The Reporter (us journalists are not afraid to exaggerate.) Meanwhile here’s a link to press gazette whose reporter Dominic Ponsford, covered the lecture and also wrote this reprise.