A day in bed

Wake at 5:30 to feed Normy and let him into the garden and then sleep until almost nine. Any hope of feeling better disappears once I get out of bed, if anything I feel worse than yesterday. Make muesli with some oats, peanuts, sultanas and apricots which I mix in the blender and then add diced apple orange and banana. After breakfast and coffee I try to get Sarah's TV and freeview box to work in order to watch the Olympic swimming heats. Total failure, although everything worked when I set it up ten days ago, it doesn't work now. I suspect it may be the batteries in the remote control, so when I take Norman out for his walk, we call at the village shop and buy some new AA batteries. We walk for about a mile and a half and I feel like I have run a marathon. When we get home I change the batteries in the remote, without any noticeable effect, but am then overcome by such a feeling of exhaustion that it is all I can do to drag myself back to bed. I sleep until one O'clock and then get up and make a cup of tomato soup, which I eat with the last of yesterday's baguette and then stagger back to bed and sleep until four. I get up and give Normy his dinner and drink a glass of milk and a couple of oaties and then collapse back in bed. At half past seven Norman wakes me and tells me it is time for his walk. Reluctantly I get up, pull on my underpants, shorts and a polo shirt, brush my hair and take him down Carr lane to the bridge. Once we get onto the dirt road he does a pooh, no dog wants to defecate in his own garden, if he has the chance to go somewhere else! As we pass the farm there is the rhythmic boom, boom of a bass and a sign on the wrought iron gates to say "The Party is here!" Someone's birthday no doubt, behind the farmhouse the chickens and some young alpaca's graze oblivious to the human racket. It is another beautiful summer's evening, swallows hunting over the cornfields, but a change seems to be in the air, a cooler wind blows from the south and there are more clouds in the sky. We get back at a quarter past eight and I am still standing, so dig a quarter pounder beef burger out of the fridge and some oven chips and put them on to cook whilst I prepare a tossed salad. In fifteen minutes everything is ready and with my appetite restored, I eat with relish. The quarter pounders turn out it be two ouncers and so I complete the meal with some bread and Camembert. After dinner we retire to the Garden Room, Norman squeezes into the armchair next to my left thigh and snoozes whilst I do a puzzle before going back to bed. I resist the thought of cancelling coffee with Leslie and morning mass until I see how I feel tomorrow. One of the consequences of the ageing process is that good health can not be taken for granted. Hopefully I will feel stronger tomorrow, if not I shall just have to patiently endure.