Earlier in the week, I was enjoying being uncomfortable again.
Comfort is a concept I’m not…comfortable with (damn my language and its grammatical quicksands). Comfort is a state of being you should probably only dip into, to enjoy with a contrasting experience in the forefront of your memory. You stamp the snow off your boots, you rub your numb hands in front of the fire, and then you press your nose against the window. It’s cold out there, you whisper comfortably.
Over the last month or so, I haven’t traveled far and I haven’t stretched my muscles enough. I’ve grown lazy and comfy. And now there I was, dragged yet another suitcase of books I still hadn’t read after 3 years of lugging them around York, rumbling across town to my new house for the second time that week (of five such trips)…and enjoying how tired I felt.
It’s a fact. I liked being that tired. There’s a kind of joy that accompanies pushing yourself towards a physical limit – usually accompanied by the humiliation of how far you’ve let that limit slip back recently. Luckily (now I know this will sound weird)…luckily I now get to walk 40 miles a week, to and from work. All I need is my new mp3 player to arrive and get teaching me colloquial Greek and everything will be perfect.
My thoughts were interrupted as a suitcase wheel caught on the kerb, flipping the whole thing over and nearly wrenching my arm out its socket.
Yeah, I giggled into the sky, bring on the discomfort. I want it. It’s good for me. I’m ready for it.
The reply in this little exchange between myself and the Fates came a few days later, when I was struck down with the worst food poisoning I’ve ever experienced (or possibly it was the Norovirus – in which case, the piece of mackarel I bought from Morrisons is blameless and I apologise to it unreservedly).
As I lay on the bathroom floor for 6 hours under a warm coat I’d managed to drag over myself, too weak to stand, shaking so hard I couldn’t press the buttons on my phone to ring work to let them know I wouldn’t be turning up, and occasionally dragging myself a few feet to visit my two friends Ralph and Huey, I realised that actually, discomfort can be a bit of a bitch.
Oh man, I am so sorry you had to go through all of that. I hope you’re all recovered now, or will be soon.
Thanks, Rebecca. It’s taken a good week, but yep, I’m eating normally again.
Just in time to eat abnormally.
I am not laughing… really, I am not. That’s the chimney making noises. I am all sympathy, instead.
I understand completely. The chimney. Uhuh.
Well, at least you didn’t say “It could only happen to you, Mike”. That’s the most popular response so far.
did you get a sample taken? food-poisoning hellishly under reported.
my worst was campylobacter in 2004. no idea what caused it as I could tick every single one of the risk factor boxes. Possibly a soft (eggy) tortilla. But I was an isolated case so we’ll never know. Anyway, 12 days of diarrhoea (when you aren’t eating anything more substantial than coca cola or ribena or rehydation fluid) and a further four days of being unable to eat will really take it out of you. so you have my sympathies.
Ashamed to say that I didn’t do the sensible thing and chase it up at the time. I just let it work its merry magic with me, and then I recovered without looking back. Never did get to the doctor (even though I briefly considered ringing an ambulance at one point)…
16 days? Ugh. That’s a whole different level of grim. Where was the suspiciously eggy tortilla from?