Absence

Yesterday I sat in the house getting colder and colder. As Victorian Terraces go, this one is not warm. Single glazed sash windows and a lack of insulation mean that at times I actually need to sit on the radiators in order to feel any heat. I might as well have the bloody door open.

This morning I was reminded by Braja that there is no such thing as 'cold'. Cold is just an absence of heat. This afternoon I am learning that yesterday's absence of heat is nothing compared to today's absence of heat. In addition to a bright, bitter and breezy day, (absent of rain) the decorator has turned up to finish painting the exterior woodwork, which means that the front door is going to be open for the next 3 hours lest I close it before the paint dries and accidentally weld myself in to the house. I guess that's one way to stop the draft.

Since the painter finished painting the bedroom window, one more roof tile appears to be absent from my roof. Unless a random passer-by casually donated a roof tile to my front garden when my back was turned, which seems unlikely.

Whilst looking through my travel photos yesterday, I noticed that there were quite a few missing from Luang Prabang in Laos and I assumed that these were either on my external drive and I hadn't yet transferred them across, or that they were on my old laptop. I can kind of remember what was on the CD - it contained my trip up Mount Phu Si with some atmospheric views and a Buddha for every day of the week. Not that I need any more pictures of Buddha in my photo collection, but all the same - what else am I missing?

I hooked up my external drive and they were nowhere to be found. So I dug out my old and dusty Compaq Pro and pressed the On button. When I bought my new laptop I was blown away by the speed of response. A friend of mine said "You'll soon get used to it and start taking it for granted" which I fervently denied. How could I possibly get used to something that operates at such a speed that I could almost suspect it was psychic?

He was right, of course. Lately my laptop speed seems to be more mundane and takes a great deal of time to boot up, and it is so easy to take this for granted. Humans are very good at adapting, it has to be said. We are also very good at surviving. And how on earth I didn't take my own life whilst waiting for my old laptop to open a simple file, I will never know. I wouldn't say it was slow, but if my new laptop is a mind-reader, this one is lying on its back attached to lots of wires and machines that go 'beep'.

The fact that it won't recognise my external drive irritated me at first, until after much searching I realised that the photos I was looking for weren't on my old laptop either. And this realisation makes me feel a bit sick, because I cannot find the CDs anywhere in the house. 700Mb of my memory has been transferred to the recycle bin.

I'm not going to mark them as absent just yet. Just that my knowledge of their presence is still waiting to be revealed...

Reasons to be cheerful

My weekends of repeatedly living life on trains and out of suitcases have finally taken their toll. The cold that I have been trying to ward off since the weekend has finally won, so I am 'resting' today.

And despite feeling even groggier than I did yesterday, I decided to count my blessings. And then having counted them, I realised something rather sad.

When I am ill, it means that I am grateful for:

1. my normal state of mental acuity and energy, which I remind myself is only on temporary leave;
2. having the excuse to wear my baggiest, warmest layers knowing that I don't have to see anybody today;
3. slobbing on the couch watching the next installment of 'Six Feet Under' (as has just been pushed through my letterbox);
4. the opportunity to doze between episodes, at will;
5. the knowledge that chocolate does not contain any calories when you are sick;
6. the option of flicking through my email, sending long replies if I feel fit, or putting aside for another day if I don't;
   
7. the fact that I currently don't have any kids to delay the recovery process;
8. not having to contact the office to call in sick, because I don't have a job; and
   
9. guilt-free space to daydream about all of my future possibilities, knowing that taking action with my current lack of clarity probably would cause disastrous results.

And the sad thing I realised is that the only difference between days when I feel good and days when I feel sick isn't what I am actually doing with my time (well, not much) but the level of guilt I feel on how I spend my time. If I had been feeling on top of the world this could have been the one day where I took the action that made the difference.

Oh, who am I kidding? This would have been yet another day where I looked at my oh-so-exciting To Do list and wondered where the time had gone.

Perhaps this is a minor wake-up call. Sod it, where is that snooze button...?