Swine Flu & Stormfronts
It’s getting kind of creepy how much news I find out online nowadays. Yesterday, as I finished work I found out on Twitter about the first swine flu death in Inverness – I know swine flu’s minor compared to normal winter flu, it’s all hype, it’s NuLabour trying to distract us from Brown’s failings, etc etc…
But it worries me. It may only kill those with underlying health issues, but my health is fragile at best – I get knocked out by nausea or fatigue very often, if I miss a meal by ten minutes, sleep too long, get too cold, or for no reason at all. I bruise easily, have all the pallor of a corpse and…. well, there’s something up with me. Vitamin deficiency, minor illnesses, after-effects of some mistakes in my youth maybe. I don’t know and my symptoms are too vague for the doctors to help, so I’m not comforted by the fact that should I catch this illness I could easily be discovered as having underlying health issues.
What was at first a fairly entertaining panic (imagine it’s a zombie outbreak and it just gets even better) has become a bit of a ‘what if?’. It’ll blow over eventually, I guess.
After that swine flu update we watched Series 2 of Torchwood (review post of Series 1 soon) and then heard the rumble of thunder outside. I’d been checking Twitter occasionally and hearing of the bad storms down in London – and checking my g-mail to see it’s weather forecast theme depicting heavy rainclouds didn’t really help.
Then the rain started. I was pottering about picking up rubbish and plotting baking, watching it flood the uneven and poorly-concreted lane outside our house, before the lovely fiancé called me upstairs. There, I could watch it lashing down through the trees, flooding the gutters, and continuing its relentless onslaught on our lane.
I tried to stick my head out the window then got a bit worried about the rain flooding in the window and the chance of slipping to my death, so went downstairs and out to stand in it.
I love the rain. It’s determined and punishing, dark and miserable and it quietens the worlds and gives you space to think – unless you’re under a metal or plastic roof, then it just makes the world very noisy. It’s a part of my heritage, pure British and Scottish spirit, dour and grumpy but never letting up.
That and I’m just a bit weird.
So I stood out in the middle of the storm, hoping the trees didn’t get struck by lightning. Last time we had thunder I did similar, running around the high street excitedly and laughing a tad psychotically. :P
Then I realised the rain was absolutely freezing and went back inside to sniffle for a bit.
It’s morning now. Streets have flooded, the river is at high tide and rushing by cloudy brown, and I had to avoid getting soaked by cars and lorries as I walked to work in a hoody and warm, fluffy
boots that unfortunately turned out not to be waterproof and had to have the rainwater poured out at the door. I was also eating ice lollies half the way in the icy raining, because ice lollies are tasty anytime!
It’s been about two hours since and I’m still trying to dry out my jeans. I think the boots are a lost cause and I’m going to have to walk home in pumps. Oh dear.
As soon as I got into work, the downfall stopped.
That’s Scotland for you.
Love,
E.Maree