Cold

I've always liked writers to be on the sickly side, it seems far more achievable than this alpha-male powerhouses, meeting world leaders whilst writing their magnum opuses. But you always forget how even a simple cold is perfectly capable of stopping you in your tracks. I would add, that it almost seems designed for that very reason. In other words, I've looked ahead at the next few weeks and just about planned how I'm going to do all the things I have to do in a way that is relatively sane, but there's no slack at all built into that schedule. I woke up on Friday with a bit of a sore throat, and shook it off, but two days of irregular sneezing and now I've a fully blown cold, just ready for the week ahead. So everything is now dependent on which way the cold goes. I was - and am - looking forward to Elizabeth Baines's book launch tomorrow, for instance - but of course the hour has gone back last night, the rain's have started coming, the air will soon be filled with firework dust and ash, and I can see me hurtling into Chorlton on the 86 with a hacking cough that would disrupt the proceedings. Even tonight's 30 year re-run of the sublime "Abigail's Party" (BBC4, 10 o'clock) now feels beyond me, I'll have to remember how the video works - and fine a tape. It's hardly Robert Louis Stevenson or Keats, or Virginia Woolf or the Brontes, but there's nothing like a bit of feeling sickly for one to get back in touch with one's romantic, poetic side. I don't think I'll quite relapse to the extent that I've got "In Rainbows" on a loop, (I think the new Thurston Moore album "Trees Outside the Academy" is far better, anyhow). I suppose the upside is that if the cold gets worse I can batten down the hatches, unfreeze some soup, and surround myself with poetry books. I'm beginning to feel better alredy.