I like idioms. I haven't quite figured out why, but to me, they make complete sense as culturally acquired language. They can be smooth and seamless, they can cause a stir - they include metaphor, simile and cliche, often without owning up to any of these.
One idiom I've been running this week is a temperature. Or the temperature has been running me, more like. It's okay, I'm getting better, and it was sporadic and never very high, but it's stopped me in my tracks. Or rather in my bed, my own bed, which I've had to make.
I've had to abandon all sorts of plans. Two poetry readings. My longest-serving friend's 50th birthday. Most of some animation workshops I'd been looking forward to. It's not been a big deal in comparison with what many people have to put up with, and amazing friends have brought me soup, made me tea, offered me chewing gum, cut me some slack, and have generally bailed me out and stood in for me: Anna, Nadia, Barry, Lucy, Cathy, Ian, Helen, David, Iolo, Kathy, Hilda ... but I'll be glad to get back into the swing of things.
As I'm not contagious, however, I've ploughed on regardless a couple of times: to the graduation of a year's worth of social work students yesterday, for example. I wanted to be there by hook or crook. It's irreplaceable, that moment of witness, so I'd have been feeling even more out of sorts if I'd missed it.
I know the drill of graduation. Its medieval pretensions, its echoes of Hogwarts - in many ways it's not my cup of tea and I worried about causing a scene by fainting - but despite feeling washed up, by the end of the ceremony I was over the moon.
It'll take me a while to get back up to speed, but in the meantime, I am glad, that amidst the physical discomfort and psychological uncertainty that illness brings, I pushed my luck, and saw the Class of 2014 on their way out to take the world by storm.
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