Home life
Blue flu news
Alice Thomas Ellis
The sickening thing is it's all my own fault. Wandering along a country lane in the rain and the hail and the sleet as Christmas receded, I remarked compla- cently to Janet that I was never ill. I usually know better than to do this sort of thing but I wasn't thinking. I did hastily touch a bit of gnarled bark, but it was clearly the wrong sort of wood, and too late anyway since already some Nosey-Parker pagan spirit had overheard me and gone rushing off to his heathen boss-gods pointing and crying excitedly, 'There's a lady down there in that lane committing hubris.' Nemesis was round in no time.
Would that the telephone engineers were so prompt. I was talking to Deirdre the other evening when the telephone's pagan spirit decided that we'd said enough and cut us off. He resolutely refused to allow us to converse all that night and the next day. Eventually the telephone man arrived and said that her telephone had simply worn out, but I think that was because interfering pagan spirits had been plaguing it for longer than it could stand, not because it found Deirdre and me boring.
I wonder if our Editor is quite well. We lunched together last week when the flu must have been tiptoeing back to me, and I have no reason to suppose that it does not add promiscuity to its other loathsome characteristics. We both got our hair wet too. It was raining as we walked to the restaurant and when we arrived and sat down we, as one, and without consulta- tion, dried our hair with our table napkins. Luckily they were the cloth sort. Shortly afterwards I saw a bit of a programme about an American school of manners which seems to have moved over here, and the lady teacher was telling some rather sceptical-looking English kiddies that they must fold their hands in their laps to stop their napkins falling on the floor. I suppose when they were actually wielding their knives and forks (`remember, girls and boys, always start at the outside and then you can't go wrong') they would be permit- ted to leave the napery to its own devices, but I can't quite picture the expression on teacher's face if they started putting it on their heads.
I was reminded of the last time I thought I'd evicted the flu. The pipes were frozen and life was generally unappealing, so I volunteered to take the family to our newest local Chinese restaurant for Sunday lunch. At the conclusion of the meal round came the hot damp flannels, and I won- dered what the reaction would be if I should encourage the family to seize the opportunity to strip off and have a quick rub down, since bathing would be out of the question until the spring thaw. I like these little restaurential bonuses, like free kir and garlic prawns at one end and chocolates or Turkish delight at the other, and more coffee after the bill has been paid. I don't imagine they're really all that free, but as they're not written down on the bill they feel free.
I suppose if I'm going to have this infernal flu for ever I'm going to have to learn to live with it. This will mean that I would be more sensible to go to down- market caffs with tomato ketchup free on each table and a glass containing folded paper napkins. I mean, it would be too awful, and going altogether too far, to blow one's nose in a linen napkin. Oh God. Atish000.
Previous page
