A seventeen year old song!

I think I'm slowly beginning to feel well again. I still have a blocked nose, a bit of a headache and a sensation that, any moment, I might get ill again, but I'm not coughing anymore. Unlike Nathan, or, I hear from my Mum today, my brother. I must have given him the dreaded lurgie when I was there the other week. Am I the only one who takes a degree of comfort in other people around me getting ill after I've been ill? It's not a form of schadenfreude: I think it's a genuine sense of relief that it's not something more sinister! There were times last week when I thought I might be checking out...

So, today I worked on the last number in Em. I'm recycling musical material I wrote in 1999! A seventeen-year old song. God, I am a slow writer! It's right for the piece, however, and God knows it wasn't going anywhere else. I'm hoping we'll perform the song at next month's new writing cabaret. I may have to be wheeled into the room to perform as I'll have just returned from my one hundred-mile walk along the River Nene, for which I booked a series of hotels today. I now have guest houses in all but one location. I rejected a number of hotels based on the fact that they only had showers in their rooms. If I do nothing else every night, I'm getting into a bath with some heavy-duty, sweet-smelling chemicals, which are going to make me feel human again.

I released the news of the walk on Facebook today, to which someone said, "you do realise you're doing this in December?" Little Welsh Nathalie downstairs has told me not to describe myself as mad, however, so I'm now seeing myself as a pioneer. What is the point in being given this precious thing called life if we're not prepared to live it? Who knows what I'll experience walking along the Nene. Who knows what I'll discover about myself, or Northamptonshire, or water, or rain, or nature?

Philippa has told me to go and buy shoes. I need shoes. I told her I was going to do the walk besuited yet barefoot. Until I said the barefoot thing, I think she believed me. I'm certainly not prepared to walk in neon colours and man-made fibres designed to keep me simultaneously warm, cool, dry and comfortable. I have a lovely rain coat with flowers all over it, which looks rather San Francisco circa 1974. It fits the bill perfectly. I may not take my Pritt Stick with me. I'm not altogether sure I need to walk with a perfectly curled moustache!

I do have to keep reminding myself, however, that I'm not going to the Arctic Circle. There will be shops and phone reception and even though the Northamptonians talk a bit funny, they do speak a form of English... even in Higham Ferrers. I've never been to Wisbech, however. What's that place all about?

I've just swallowed a mouldy pea. It was in a glass I filled with water. It's days old. If I don't wake up in the morning, you'll all know why.

In other news, Nathan's enormous hap is off the needles. It's a giant hexagon, a metre-and-a-half across. He's been knitting it for months.