What a Swine!

I worried about it, listened with growing alarm at each radio report, I checked symptoms online, discussed protocols with fellow workers who listened politely, bored looks on their bemused faces. I cleaned my bedroom, figuring that no doctor would be able to tend to me if she had to climb over various un-specifiable obstacles and piles of unsorted junk, I stocked up on bottles of sparkling water – my treat, abandoned in these economic times – and armed myself with a stack of books. If I were going to be stuck in bed it would be in the excellent company of J.M. Coetzee. Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Childhood lay on my bedside table, the last nine pages waiting to be savoured. This fictionalized memoir of Coetzee’s early life growing up in South Africa is followed by Youth, next on the reading list.

Monday morning I proceeded to come down with it: my eyes started to irritate, a headache descended, my ears felt funny and I definitely felt feverish. I dashed over to the chemist to buy a top of the range one-second thermometer - I’d wanted one for years, now was the perfect time - and stuck this new fangled must-have in my shell like: it was down! I couldn’t believe it: 36.3, not a single digit over 37. Still, I felt dog rough. Home beckoned, appointments cancelled for the rest of the day, sheets pulled over my head and sleep came instantly.

Tuesday morning, after a hearty breakfast, I settled in for a day’s rest (I still felt awful, I can assure you) and started reading: I finished Boyhood (it was excellent), got stuck into Youth and noted, with delight, that part three, Summertime, is due out in September.

It seems that I’m one of the lucky ones. Whatever it is, it’s not going to lay me low for long and John Maxwell Coetzee has been such good company that the time has passed quickly.

The last word, I will leave to the enigmatic Hunter S. Thompson who wrote, "In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile; and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep."