Nasty cold has me grounded...

Since returning from Verona last week I've been laid up with a nasty cold and I can't for the life of me figure out where it came from or who might have given it to me. One of the problems with flying, of course, is that you pick things up courtesy of the air con system running through the plane. Who knows what awful diseases my fellow passengers were suffering from? Not me. So I was fine the weekend I got home. Remember I had that extra day courtesy of British Airways messing up and cancelling the flight with no sign of an apology, no compensation, nothing. Well, put it this way, on my next flight (which just so happens to be in a fortnight's time) I won't be flying with BA. No, I'll go with Finnair instead. I've flown with them before and it's a million times better. But more of that trip later perhaps, it's not on the blog radar just yet.

They're good but they won't prevent a cold...

So, Tuesday was when it all started. I got to work okay that morning and then suddenly I was hit with a streaming nose and started sneezing. It continued and intensified and very quickly I reached that awful nasal stage where there's a strong need to want to blow my nose. I haven't had an illness like this since early 2017 (if you exclude COVID in January 2022) and I know this wasn't COVID so I didn't even bother testing. I was still functioning, that's the main thing. Tuesday night I was kind of okay, we had dinner and then I started to feel weary, I kept falling asleep and starting to snore, much to the dismay of my family. But I knew there was something wrong and I nipped out to the convenience store to buy some Lemsip (my go to drug whenever I have a cold). As I said, fortunately, I've not been ill for some time, easily six years, which means I must be doing something right, hopefully that means I eat the right foods and consume enough fruit and vegetables in my diet, even if I have been living on cakes over the past few days prior to returning from Italy. Well, not living on them, but certainly swapping my ultra healthy breakfasts for cake and cappuccino, which is odd when you consider the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet (surely that doesn't include cake and filled croissants?).

I decided it was best that night to sleep the other way around, ie not next to my wife for fear of giving her my cold, but the other way around. If I'm honest with you, whenever I break from the norm in terms of sleeping arrangements I get kind of excited, like when you're a kid and you plan a midnight feast when everybody's gone to bed. I might well have mentioned my strange fantasies of sleeping in different parts of the house, although I've yet to do any strange in-house camping, like hunkering down in a sleeping bag in the conservatory, but I won't go on about this as somewhere I've written a blogpost about it and when I find it I'll put in a link. Here's the link, click here.

Tuesday night after my first Lemsip I slept well but wasn't really looking forward to going to work in the morning. There's something horrible about splashing warm water on my face when my nose is stuffed up or streaming or both (in this case it was a mixture of both). I went to bed with a toilet roll by my side so that I could blow my nose without getting out of bed if I had to, but the Lemsip did the trick and, give or take, I was out like a light. Once I'd showered (the very thought of it horrified me) I felt better but it was false, I was nowhere near better. At work I was kind of fine... well, alright, no I wasn't, I tried to be, but it was a big struggle. If I remember, I sat in Busy Beans sipping a cappuccino having already eaten my peanut butter and banana sandwiches, my Pink Lady apple and my 22 red grapes: that's what I have for lunch on more than one day in the week, it's pretty healthy and it sees me through, but because I was feeling weary and stuffed up there was no way I was going to handle the three-mile walk that I normally do at lunch times (I've been doing them for years) so instead, a cappuccino in Busy Beans sufficed (and was most welcomed). I was so stuffed up I couldn't really focus on reading either so I put aside my copy of Buzzin' by Bez and just sat there looking at my phone, reading old blogs, you name it, anything but actually concentrating on anything. And that's fine because I'd been concentrating all morning reading page proofs on a computer screen. Somehow I forced myself to keep it together on the work front, which was just as well as there were deadlines to meet and I met them.

When I reached home Wednesday night I had dinner (I can't remember what it was) and then I headed for the spare room (which had been occupied the night before, hence me sleeping at the other end of the bed). I hit the sack around 2000hrs, put my radio on and drifted off to sleep. I awoke, of course, at midnight thirty and went downstairs to make myself a Lemsip, this didn't take long and I returned to bed, which was great, it was like a secret camp and I jumped into bed and listened to BBC Radio Three until I realised I needed to switch it off in order to sleep. This I did and I guess I must have had, in total, around seven hours of sleep. I went downstairs, had breakfast, which by now I couldn't taste, and then went upstairs to face the warm shower and the sensation of splashing warm water on my face. Nothing worse when I've got a cold as I explained above.

I'm guessing that these things build up and then start to calm down again, but I wasn't sure at which stage I was at. After showering and dressing I always felt better, but I knew I wasn't and sure enough as the journey to work progressed I found myself still sneezing and blowing my nose and getting a slight headache as a result, just a dull nagging ache which added to the awfulness of my condition. But I got through it and I think I was kind of fit enough to do the three-miler on Thursday lunch time, not that doing so did me any favours. Thursday night and Friday night I hit the sack in the spare room listening to the radio, one curtain drawn back so I could see the night sky outside the window. Hunkering down, for that was what I was doing, hunkering down like a vagrant in the woods, toilet roll at my side for any midnight blowings or wipings (of my nose). 

I followed this routine and I will do it again tonight, for it's now Saturday and it's the first time I actually realised that things had improved. I was weary, there was no way I was capable of riding to Oxted, which had been my plan prior to this cold hitting the shore, so I chilled, took a drive to Hever Castle but didn't fancy paying over £60 just to enter the place. Instead, we ended up in Sevenoaks at Basil and here I realised that things were feeling good, well, not good in the sense that I was 100% better (I wasn't) but good in the sense that I could smell things again (or was starting to). I had a panini, I had a cappuccino and I had a Millionaire's Shortbread and yes, I was beginning to feel human again, but it's not over, it's just starting to subside, the tide was on it's way out but it hadn't got there yet. I reckon one more early night should do it although I don't think I'll ride to Westerham tomorrow, I need the rest.

Going to bed at 2000hrs isn't a bad idea, but there's always that 'waking up past midnight' thing that can be annoying. Just the thought of knowing I've got to try and get back to sleep again, but I've been doing it and I think I need it. Listening to the radio is relaxing as it's not as crap as television and if I can break the habit of falling asleep on the sofa and waking up at gone eleven and then having to go around locking the house up, well, that's got to be a good thing.

So here I sit, in the bedroom (not the one I'm sleeping in) looking out on the houses across the street as the light starts to fade and the street lights come on. In the distance I can see the red lights of high rise cranes, I can see the darkened silhouette of the woods and serene looking skies overhead, there's even the sound of a jet circling Heathrow or making it's final approach. There are no lights on, just the halogen glow of the computer that is sitting on a pine table by the window. Whether people can see me if they walk past I don't know and I don't care. Everything is still.

Tonight the clocks go forward one hour and then it's officially British Summer Time. The blossoms are on the trees too, well, not ours, that always blooms later, say next month, but the fact that the blossoms have arrived, along with the daffodils means only one thing: decent weather ahead and that means more riding of the bike. I won't be there tomorrow and will text Andy shortly on that, but here's to next week.

Diarr-Rio! When it all went wrong...

Well, not drastically wrong. I'm now back in the UK after a relaxing flight home, but the bit before was a little trying to say the least and very disappointing as I'd rather hoped that Thursday (my last full day in Rio) would be spent sightseeing as opposed to one site (a building site across the road – see view from my hotel room shot in earlier post). You see, all was well with the world. I went down for dinner around 8pm on Wednesday night having completed a little bit of work in my hotel room. There was a live band playing in the Atlantico restaurant as I took my seat, ordered a glass of Malbec, asparagus soup and sea bass followed by a fresh fruit salad. The view of Copacabana Bay at night was spread before me and I was glad that all the hard work was over and a day of being a tourist lay ahead of me.

The 'Sofatel' – much needed sofa for weary old me

The food seemed fine enough and by 9pm I was back in my room and ready for bed. But around midnight things changed. I awoke with a stomach ache and lo and behold I had the shits! Just what the doctor ordered. That toilet observation window (see pic in previous post) would have been most unwelcomed had my wife been sharing the room with me – why was it there, I often wondered, who wants a window on people taking a dump? Fortunately I was alone so in many ways the TV was on but nobody was watching. In short a broken night led to chronic weariness the following day. I lolled about and slept until around 11.30am when I got my act together enough to extend my check-out by a couple of hours and then went back to my room to pack: tiresome at the best of times, much worse when under the weather.

After checking out and ordering a cab to the airport for later – I was flying out of Rio at 1055pm – there was nothing left to do other than to find somewhere to crash and this meant one of the sunloungers by the pool, the business centre and then some easy chairs adjacent to the first floor Atlantico restaurant, which might have been the cause of the problem (there was no way of really knowing). While I never drank tap water I did clean my teeth with it and I used the water from the mains to wash and shower, it could have been that although I was hardly going to wash simply by tipping loads of small bottles of mineral water over my head; or it could have the fresh fruit, which I'm guessing was rinsed in water. Who knows? The long and the short of it was that I was weary I couldn't really risk finding myself at the top of Corcovado in need of a toilet, so first I sat in the business centre reading Ayn Rand, then I moved to the poolside where I lay for a couple of hours until around 5pm when I found the wonderful sofa covered in cushions (see pic above). I set the alarm on my iphone for 7pm, and then having fallen asleep, I awoke and just lie there for 10 minutes or so until the time was right to find my car to the airport. I was feeling alright, but I was weak and tired and things weren't going to get any better.

In the cab, I gazed out of the window onto the busy streets of Rio. It was busy, there was a lot of traffic but eventually I reached the airport, bade farewell to my driver and set about the boring and tedious process of going through security. I don't know about you, but whenever I hear the name Richard Reeve I feel like reaching for my revolver. Once through I discovered that Rio airport was a pretty sparse place: a couple of awful food outlets and and duty free shop and that was it and the last thing I wanted to do was risk another bout of stomach problems so, having not eaten all day, I continued to fast and eventually it was time to board the plane. Unlike the journey out when I was sitting in seat 37b (the exit door row so plenty of leg room) I was now in seat C30, an aisle seat, so I had plenty of room (for just one of my legs, the right one). Fortunately seat 29 C in front of me was unoccupied and offered plenty of leg room as there was no seat 28C (just 28A and 28B). I asked the steward if I could change seats and he said I could. Result!

This stark shot of Rio airport sums up how I felt...

For the next nine hours I slept – or rather dozed – and didn't give a damn about the odd bit of turbulence, which the pilot later apologised for, stating that it might have helped passengers who were trying to sleep. He was right in a way, the 'gentle rocking' as he described it over the intercom prior to landing, did help and with only 1hr, 59 minutes left of the flight I found myself awake. I listened to Brian Eno and Karl Hyde's album High Life but was bored by the start of track two and switched to Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Edward Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory (highly appropriate as we approached the UK) before deciding to watch Top Gear, a kind of 'best of' entitled something like Ambitious but Rubbish, it was brilliant, and soon we landed at Terminal Five Heathrow where a car was waiting to take me home. When I got there, nobody was in and I had to wait around 10 minutes before I could get in and now, here I am.

No cycling today, I didn't think it wise, but I'll be back on the bike tomorrow morning without fail especially if the weather is as good as it was this morning, although it's clouded over now and is bloody cold...compared with the weather in Rio! Remember, it was 33 degrees, not the pathetic 8 degrees it is here in London.