Après-Flu

Well, the cold that I thought I had turned out to be none other than full blown flu – I have felt like death warmed up all week. I still have a nasty, sore cough and a very tight chest – quite asthma-y. I haven’t had a fag in over a week! And I spent half of last night with my head over a jug of boiling, steaming water with Vicks Eucalyptus in it.

I think last night was the climax of illness though, so I should be feeling better from now on. Fingers crossed!

Thank you for all your messages in the last week – I have not really kept up with any blogs or anything, but will make up for it!

In the last week, more and more stories have emerged about the storms across France. We have been out and about a bit – further than we did last weekend checking houses, and it looks as though herds of elephants have been stampeding all over the Gers. There are trees down everywhere, and most forests have been literally decimated. And I do mean decimated, in the true sense of the word. We have heard stories about how much people have lost, and in one case about a person who has been missing since the storms. We are very lucky – we have lost little, and we are all ok. That is plenty to be grateful for.

Many people have only just got their electricity back on. We’ve had ours since Monday, but for a lot of people it only came back on on Friday.

What it has done for us, is to make us realise how much we take for granted. We are so used to living with light at the flick of a switch, hot water at the turn of a tap that we cannot imagine life without these basic luxuries. And they are luxuries – millions of people across the world live without these luxuries that we consider necessities.

And I have learnt that it is possible to live without them. OK, we had an advantage in the fact that we have a bloody great pool outside, full of water. But, that’s the very reason why settlements grew up around rivers and lakes – a source of water. So let’s, for a second, imagine that it was a pond outside our back door. We lived by candlelight, boiled all the water we needed, and entertained ourselves.

Yes, I could live like that if I was pushed to it – but it would be the entertaining myself bit that I would find hard. I like TV, movies, music and the internet. And talking amongst yourselves loses its novelty after about half an hour!! Reading by candlelight is difficult, and not good for your eyes, so I think if I lived like that permanently I would just go to bed very early every night!

Wouldn’t be so much of a hardship if I had a bloke!! In fact, it may even be an advantage!