Wistful sore throat

I woke up today with a sore throat. Joy. That'll be another cold Nathan's passed on to me. My Mum thinks it's all part of the same illness. There are so many people who have been poorly on and off this year, some complaining of illnesses which go back to November last year. It's particularly galling because I've been feeling really well of late...

I've finally managed to enfranchise myself again. Is that the opposite of disenfranchise? A letter arrived from Haringey Council this morning, which said, "I'm writing to let you know that your recent application to be added to the electoral register has been successful." Ironically the letter then says, "you don't need to do anything else. You won't need to register again unless your entitlement to be registered changes." Or, of course, if there's a glitch in the system which involves someone at the council randomly removing a tax-paying Haringey resident from the voting register as happened to us both last year! We were told then that it had been our responsibility to let the council know that we hadn't moved out of the borough. I wonder how long it will be until it's our responsibility to tell the council we haven't moved again. Twats.

I went to the osteopath this morning, highly conscious of the fact that I'm always ill when I see him. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow; "is the cough STILL bothering you?" I felt rather unconvincing as I told him that I'd felt perfectly well for the best part of a month. I'm pretty sure he's now decided I have some sort of terminal illness.

I came home and worked on a couple of little piano/ vocal arrangements; a Shakespeare song and a Lewis Carroll poem.

A close friend texted with some rather bad news just after lunch, which put me in a sad and contemplative mood for the rest of the day. Sometimes life seems so astonishingly unfair and words feel so inadequate...

The news made me think about all sorts of things; largely how in life there really should only be space for love, and yet we waste so much time and energy hanging onto hatred and anxiety. Me particularly.

Nathan came home from work and locked himself in the sitting room filming the third of his knitting vlogs whilst I worked on the bass band arrangements of A Symphony For Yorkshire whilst continuing with a whole heap of admin and making a vegetable stew.

We caught up on previous episodes of Mr Selfridge, which finished with a slightly surreal sequence (with strange anachronistic rocky guitar music and soft focus slow-mo) which featured the lovely Emily from the cast of Brass! It was fabulous to see her on telly, and if it weren't for this silly sore throat and my friend's bad news, I'd have gone to bed with a big smile on my face. As it stands I'm feeling somewhat wistful.