Just when you think it's safe to go back into the water...

...you find it isn't.

It's been a long, long day.  I think I probably will get round to talking about what has just happened, at some point and in some regard, but tonight I am shattered.  A different shattered to where I was when meningitis was in full swing, I must say, because I have concentrated on the idea of keeping perspective in a wider picture, and it does actually work. We are fine.  The kids are fine. The dog is fine.

But it has been a day to teach you that things you quietly bank on having can - CAN -  suddenly be taken away by, well, shall we say Nasty-Gnomes?  That some people honestly, seriously, wish you ill.  And that the ill that they wish upon you can be completely unexplained and undeserved.  And and AND... that there is not a jot you can do about it.

And does it matter? In our case, no, probably not, actually. We are not, after all in Haiti.

Sometimes I crave the stabilising effect of a certain piece of music but tonight Jerome K Jerome has come rushing to aid.  Now if there was EVER a ghost to have a pint with in the pub, for me, it would be him.  With George and Harris and a canine-ghost of Montmorency at our feet.

We had this read at our wedding.  And today I think it has waxed more relevant than ever before.

For those of you I've bumped into today, I Am SO sorry for looking grumpy.


"George said:‘You know we are on the wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.’

"George comes out really quite sensible at times. You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

"How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha’pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with—oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all!—the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

"It is lumber, man—all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness—no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombrewaving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget- me-nots.

"Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome


Thirst IS a dangerous thing indeed.  Now, whose idea was it to have a dry January? Dramatic sigh.