Perfect Timing

Yesterday was a truly lovely day, warm and sunny and I felt quite light-hearted until about seven in the evening.

Arrived at St M's for choir practice suddenly feeling out of sorts, miserable, generally down.

No idea why until opening my mouth for warm-up exercises found I had a sore throat.

After that, symptoms started arriving thick and fast.

Sneezing, eyes watering, very warm.  Oh no, not a cold, please not a cold.

If this sounds paranoid that't because it is.  I hate colds (not flu please note), because my childhood was dogged by high temperatures, sore throats and runny noses to such an extent that I developed a sort of 'siege' mentality in adult life.

This is not because my colds are any worse than anyone else's colds, just that they last so much longer.  On average about two weeks and almost invariably wind up with a chest infection.

For a singer, this is not good, and now for an ageing singer, is considerably worse.

Last weekend we had two services on Sunday and this weekend we also have two services.  Just about perfect timing to lose one's voice.

The 'siege mentality' refers to my now deeply ingrained habit of, at the first sniffle, going shopping and laying in a huge store of fall-back items like lemons, honey, tissues, paracetomol and soups of all kinds. 

Nowadays with no chaufeur/husband to rely on I buy as much as I can reasonably find space for and get a helpful taxi-driver to act as donkey with my marathon shop.

I do not claim that this is reasonable behaviour, nor do I advocate it for all and sundry, but it satisfies my need to be prepared for the worst - even if it never happens!