All alone and feeling sorry for myself

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that there’s very little worse than being on your own and having a bad cold.

I feel like **** today. What I really really want is somebody to wait on me hand and foot, mop my fevered brow, make me lemon tea and tuck me up in bed; instead, I have to get on with it.

Yesterday, before this bug caught hold, I went to crosswords. It was a disaster. The crosswords were so difficult it took an hour and a half to do two, and that was with quite a bit of cheating. When Jack was there, he’d done the crosswords beforehand and therefore knew how hard/easy they were. Now it’s just pot luck and it’s not working. I had the bright idea of maybe trying to do some crosswords before next week then taking those along. I wouldn’t be able to take part but I could give some help with clues. The problem was, I couldn’t do any of the ones I tried.

I’ve finished the Saturday Telegraph prize crossword three weeks in a row but I haven’t got a blank grid. On Saturday I’ll get two copies of the paper, then I’ll have a blank to copy. Sod’s law says I won’t be able to finish it!

I called Barbara when I got in. Her husband died very suddenly a few weeks ago and she’s stopped coming to crossword class. I called to let her know we were thinking of her . The poor woman’s in such a state. She says she can’t stop crying. I know exactly where she’s coming from as I lost Gareth like that. One minute he was there, the next – gone. There’s nothing I could say to make things better. Only time and the support of her family can do that. I think it helped her, talking to me. I hope so because when I hung up, I was the one in tears.  

Tomorrow is BBQ day but if I feel like this, I won’t be able to go. No point spreading the germs around, or risking making it worse by sitting outside, even if the weather is fabulous (at the moment I have al the windows open it’s so warm and bright and gorgeous).

I’m going to try to get some work done. There’s no way I can be creative with this thick head, but I might be able to rewrite an old story for The People’s Friend.