Coughing up Blood
Dear Diary,
I am sorry I have not written in you for many days now. In Winter I find that staving off the demons of despair cannot be achieved by sitting in an English country garden; for some reason the cold and dark is their element, quite the opposite of what we are led to believe. I have therefore decided to re-christen these doleful beings Moomins. Moomins, you see, are from Finland, where it is very cold indeed, and there they thrive. Furthermore, as a child I remember many sleepless nights bequeathed to me by their insistant and sinister working upon my mind.
So in the Winter I find that the most effective methods of suppressing the Moomins of despair is to remain active and engage myself in dancing, music, merrymaking and cavorting of as many types and variations as possible. It is with this in mind that last Thursday I took a day off from suspended animation to go to Hereford.
If, dear diary, you knew Hereford, you would appreciate the irony of my previous statement. It is a more pleasant town than Worcester, not qualitatively (there is little difference in quality of experience) but quantitatvely: there is less of Hereford than there is of Worcester, and were there less of Worcester it would certainly be as pleasant a place as Hereford. But I digress. The irony of course is that Hereford is currently a plague town.
Legionnaire’s disease has struck and though, dear diary, I have little conception of its wicked workings, I am aware of two things. Firstly, its source on this occasion: allegedly the brewery of Samuel Bulmer, whose ales (brewed under licence) and ciders I have enjoyed for many a year, has issued forth a noxious steam which has contaminated the very air of the town. Secondly, its preferred victims: the elderly. So far the modest outbreak has helped to stave off the terrible consequences of Malthus’ predictions by removing fourteen of them from the surface of the earth. It is confidently predicted that this year the pension queue at the central post office of Hereford will be greatly diminished. I am afraid, dear diary, that their fate may well also be mine.
We (Frog, Naomi and I) arrived in Hereford in good health, found an eating establishment of sound character and appearance, partook of ice-creams in the breezy November afternoon, inspected the Mappa Mundi in the unpretentious cathedral and browsed a shop well-stocked with all manner of rare cinematograph projections. It was a happy day. In the evening we returned to Worcester, as large and lacklustre as ever – the town, that is, not ourselves.
That evening the Frog treated us to the sincere and moving janglings of his rag-tag ensemble, the Economy Prostitutes, and it was a lively show indeed. All things considered, diary, the day was pleasantly used. However, I awoke the next morning with a throat as rough as sandpaper and a needling pain in the sinuses caused by acute blockage which persisted all the way through the weekend. I finish this entry in a state of modest agitiation, wondering whether I linger in the foothills of influenza or of a more sinister debilitation altogether. It seems the Moomins of despair may yet have the last word.
