Changing.

I didn’t make a post yesterday because I felt ill – immensely tired, weak, washed out and in pain. In short, useless even by my inestimable standards. I think part of it was due to having sat outside in the garden too long while the sky grew gloomier and the cold northerly wind strengthened. I still felt chilled even after a hot shower in a warm bathroom.

I think most of it, though, can be credited to post-operative trauma. I’ve learned over the past couple of years that the older you get, the longer it takes to get over operations and the more pain you experience in the process. I had my appendix removed when I was 12 and within a week I was on holiday and as fit as a 12-year-old should be. It doesn’t work like that any more and sometimes I wonder why I bother.

But today I was musing on why some of the flowering plants in the garden have done unusually well this year, while others have failed miserably. The big hydrangea at the bottom of my garden has had no flowers at all for the first time since I came here, and the sweet peas which usually have hundreds of pink and blue blooms have had about six. The times really do seem to be a-changin’, and I’m half convinced that Covid is but one part of a much bigger bull intent on upsetting the apple cart of life. 

And I’m still intrigued by that Filipino nurse and her strange behaviour. She was sitting next to me while I was undergoing the angioplasty on Wednesday, and then volunteered to help take me back to the ward. So now I’m wondering whether she knew something I didn’t, but couldn’t tell me for some reason. And I further wonder whether the gods will let me be an alpha predator in my next life.