Easter Sunday and I wake up to find that someone has given me an Easter cold, bastards! I wake with a streaming nose and a general blocked upness. I check my vitals and the good news is that they show no fever or decline in other functions. So it will be my standard approach to a cold, breakfast and then a training session followed by a lot of rest. Breakfast goes down and stays there then I am off to the garage and the rowing machine. I cant face an hour but I reckon I can do forty five minutes. This turns out to be a good decision as the session is a real flog. By the end I am knackered. I do not make my 9 kilometre standard but I do manage 8+ kilometres.
I record the session and then get changed into lounge gear lunching on chicken soup that other well know cure for a cold. After that I read Night Watch by Terry Pratchett inspired by the fact that a friend is also reading it. After a while my cold can no longer maintain focus and I slide into a bank holiday sports fest of rugby and football until I can take no more and I return to reading.
In the evening I become increasingly limp and watch a film on TV based on the true events of a hostage taking in Amsterdam. The ending was interesting in that the hostage ran out and was chased by the perpetrator only for a police car to run the perpetrator down and for him to die from his injuries the following day. Imagine the paperwork! By the end of the evening I am wrung out so take my meds and go to bed determined that this cold will be a single toilet roll cold. That’s the way colds get measured in this household.
Monday and I wake with my my cold intact as witnessed by my runny nose so I get up and make my partner tea and myself a Lemsip. I return to bed and sip my soothing potion and chat to my partner. whilst savouring the heady mixture of hot lemon and paracetamol I begin to wonder about indulgence. So I ask my partner what has been her greatest indulgence. Its a tricky question. I come up with two, the first being the Wolf, a Suzuki Jimny, a four wheel drive car that was a third car. Secondly a personalised Mont Blanc Meisterstuck classic fountain pen, which I either lost or was stolen from me. The car sadly had to go as it was an indulgence that started to be too expensive to keep. With the exploration of indulgence done and the Lemsip finished I get up and have breakfast, slowly, before drafting the blog for yesterday and the start of today. The day the Pope dies I am informed by my news feed. The plan for the day is to ease my way through the rest of the day and then the family are going to see The Penguin Lessons. I am fascinated to see if reference is made to the phenomenal frequency at which penguins evacuate their bowels! It will either be fun or dismal. Jean Reno made a film called My Penguin Friend based on a true story, which might be a better bet, a sort of Leon meets Pingu.
The afternoon is eating, reading and preparing for the trip to the cinema, which means more Lemsip and clean hankies. The Penguin Lessons is based on some true events in Argentina, the main character and the penguin actually existed and there is old cine film to prove it. The school also existed, as for the rest I think there was artistic license. What did I take from the film, two things, one; people like to talk to penguins and two; penguins are good listeners. After returning home I up date the draft blog and settle down to some reading and making last minute alterations to tomorrows Tesco order until its time for my night meds and retiring to my bed. The Lemsips seem to be holding off the worst of the cold, which is good as I do not want to be sniffing all the way through La Traviata tomorrow evening, and have people think I am a hopeless romantic.
