I Languish In Bed

I can tell I'm getting better because there is a new splodge of paint on my bedroom wall. 

Last Sunday, I was chatting to my eldest son on the phone when I was felled by a virus, not that I admitted it at the time. My eyes started streaming and I choked on my words. Always one for a bit of healthy denial, I told him that my response was probably an allergic reaction to some cut lilies I had bought which were starting to unfold their petals after a couple of days in the warmth. The fact that I have never reacted to lilies like this before didn't strike me as a reasonable objection to my theory. I couldn't possibly be ill, I told him and myself, as I've had the 'flu vaccine and I'd made it through the winter in good health and wasn't going to be caught now.

By evening I was in a position of defeat - horizontal, lying on my side with a tissue under my nose. And for the next three days, that's pretty much how I stayed, with occasional forays to a sitting up position and my laptop whilst I reassured myself that the bits of the world for which I feel a keen sense of responsibility were doing absolutely fine without me.  I leapfrogged Ibuprofen and Paracetamol and went off lots of things including coffee.

Then yesterday, I got dressed at midday, went to the shops to get more pills, and on the way back, picked up a paint sample pot. Within 15 minutes of being seized by the idea of decorating something, and soon, I'd dolloped a small patch onto my bedroom wall.  I then sunk back into my pillows, feeling more peaceful.

As for the sudden onset of decorating fever, maybe it was the result of staring for too long at four walls this week; or maybe it arose from the need to feel a sense of achievement after being taken out of my daily routine - that deeply ingrained work ethic which says that ill or not, progress must be made!

Two days on, that paint splodge has become a mark of comfort: something about an intent almost as convincing as a fully painted wall. I've fallen for its pale light blue-grey - a fresh, clean hopefulness. Maybe on my brief trip outside, I was caught by something else - by the sense that spring, with all its promise of new and bright colour, is at last in the air.