Stress head

It struck me at about 6pm today that I'm stressed out of my tiny mind. Much as I'd like to say that the experience of camping in Cornwall was both fun and deeply relaxing, the combination of sleeping on grass, not being able to take a bath and being woken up at 7.30 every morning by excited children rather took its toll. 

I returned from camping and almost immediately jumped on a train to Newcastle, and then had to be up with the lark this morning to stagger across to East London to edit the third film about the requiem for The Space.

I'm now at Victoria station, about to head to Hove, where, before bed time, I have to record another audio blog, this one whilst sitting on the beach. I am in desperate need of a lie-in, or a day of watching the Olympics, but my diary is full until a week on Saturday. The sum total of my food intake today. One weetabix and a 2 pieces of toast with marmite. 

I got to East London and was really ratty with Hazel the editor whom I like enormously. I simply didn't have the energy reserves to remember my manners, which I'm very angry about. I ache all over; every inch. I just want to bury my head in a little blanket and sleep. 

Now the train to Hove has been delayed by a track side fire. I shouldn't find this stressful, but I do. 

350 years ago, Pepys made the epic journey to Rochester, which started with a short hop along the Thames to Greenwich. The water taxi was forced to make a u-turn, however, because his clerk had forgotten to pack his riding boots. 

In Greenwich, Pepys was fed and watered by George Cocke and his handsome wife. A frugal but delicious meal, which included plates of fruit. Pepys was delighted to find mulberries, the first he'd eaten since a childhood visit to Kent.

From Greenwich, they travelled by boat to Gravesend, but arrived after dark. They stuck to the  plan of riding horses to Ashford despite the darkness and Pepys worrying about a pain, which one assumes was what he normally referred to as his "old pain" as, before going to bed, he regaled his travelling companions with gory accounts of his successful operation to remove a bladder stone the size of a tennis ball! Straight through the perineum. Ouch!