When things start going wrong.
Feb. 24th, 2005 10:54 amYesterday I left my nephew in his parents' hands. My mother left for Rome - and promptly found that she had misread her ticket and was half an hour late to catch her flight. She managed to get there on time, only to find that it was two hours late. Meanwhile I went home and promptly fell sic with a painful, ripping sort of cough that rises right from the lungs - I can feel them practically being torn every time I cough. The savage weather is devouring heating fuel at a rate I cannot afford, let alone that I should go out today or tomorrow and get the money and pay for the heating, and I really, really do not feel like it. Worst of all, day-before-yesterday I had a scary fit of unfocussed sight. For half an hour I could not focus on anything, so much as to read the price on a food label. This leads me to fear that my sight might be in danger - which is just about the worst thing I could think of. Finally, when my mother finally got home, she found that the filthy weather - which is blanketing not only England, but all of Europe - had got to her own mother - my last surviving grandparent - and that she has slipped into a coma. It is only the icing on the cake that the weather seems to have got the Pope as well, and that he too is apparently in danger of his life. We will have another Pope, but I am not going to have another grandmother, nor, if the danger is verified, another sight.