Mick and Keith and a moment that changed my life
Are you sure you're on the right track? If you're having doubts, you could do worse than look at Mick and Keith, or maybe even Madonna...
Hi friends,
There was a flurry of activity following my relaunch of Compendia a couple of weeks ago, with a couple of admin-related posts and so on cluttering up the schedule. But recently I’ve settled more comfortably into my plan, which is to post one longer issue and one thread a week.
Or so I thought, anyway. On Thursday of this week, feeling a bit under the weather and with a party to go to on Saturday — one that I’ve had in my diary literally for a year, and have bought a costume for and everything — I decided I’d do a Covid test. Just in case. I don’t want to be the irresponsible guest who turns the evening into a superspreader event. And yes, it was positive.
It almost feels like doing the test gave the infection carte blanche. Up until the moment I found out I was positive I’d been feeling ‘a bit rough’, but the second that second line appeared on the test cartridge ‘kinda peaky’ turned into ‘completely sh*t’. I’ve spent the last three days coughing and sneezing, more or less horizontal, trying (unsuccessfully) to doze during the day and to sleep (also unsuccessfully) at night. My sheets are soaked with sweat and until this morning my sore throat was so bad that whenever I coughed it felt like I was trying to bring up a cheese-grater I’d accidentally swallowed. Needless to say I didn’t go to the party, and one of my jobs for when I feel better is to return the outfit I’d bought (unless there are any more 70’s-disco themed fancy dress parties on the horizon? Please? I even have a wig…).
I missed out on a party, I'm not on oxygen struggling to breathe.
Anyway, I don’t want to overestimate my illness. If I hadn’t done the test I’d assume I had a bad cold, with a little side-order of zero energy and extreme fatigue. Many — if not most — people suffer far more with Covid, which almost goes without saying. I’m not looking for sympathy. I missed out on a party, I'm not on oxygen struggling to breathe. I’ve finished a great book (‘Anna O’, by Matthew Blake) and started another (‘You’d Look Better as a Ghost’ by Joanna Wallace) and also finished watching ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (highly recommended). It could’ve been (much) worse.
But I haven’t been able to write (until this morning, anyway) which means it has thrown my schedule for Compendia. Right up until an hour or so ago I was going to just let today quietly slip by without putting out a Compendia article, but then I changed my mind.
Why? I’ve been thinking for a while that I might like to write something about how I came to be a writer (or, since I believe I’ve always been a writer, perhaps I mean, ‘how I came to be someone who put writing fiction front and centre in their life’). And since the story involves The Rolling Stones, and their new album came out this week, it sort of feels like it’s this week or never.
So here goes, a missive from my sick bed. Beware. There may be typos…
I think sometimes we all have doubts about whether we’re doing the right thing in life.
Like many of life’s ‘big decisions’, it was actually composed of a huge number of small realisations. Little moments that individually could be ignored, but collectively and eventually added up to an avalanche that could not. One of those moments, in particular, I remember very well.