I
woke up this
morning feeling a bit less
crap than the day before. You see, I have been
ill recently, down with a
chest infection, and possibly a case of the
flu, and the worst of it was a couple of days ago, but since then I have been
improving. I was almost
back to normal today. Almost. My body still feels
heavy and
warm, and I am still coughing up
flem. Yuck. But then again, I think tomorrow I will feel even better. The bugs are on their way out.
I just know it.
After waking up I wandered gently around the house, and was a bit shocked to see it was already a quarter to 12. Wow. Lunch time already. I resolved that because I was feeling a little better that I would put into plan all the things I had in mind when I went to sleep last night. Top of the agenda was to fill out an urgent form for the Student Loans People and send it off poste-haste, if you will excuse the pun. I went and had breakfast, watched some pointless tv. Had a shower, got changed and went to the place where I put the form. It wasn't there. After hassling the other people in my house for moving my stuff for a couple of hours (bad thing to do, I know, but the form was IMPORTANT, and VERY URGENT) I got the form and filled it out. By this time I had an omlette for lunch as well. I sat and ate, and then my father said he wished to take the car. I wanted to go into Belfast, but then again, I thought I could wait, I was going to phone him when I was ready, but he would only have to close up shop a half-hour before closing time anyway, so I gave the whole thing a miss.
I listened to some rather interesting conversations between him and a few others at lunch, and they gave me time to think. For instance, our insurance company hasn't given us the cheque they owe us for our last car, so my father gave them a very hard time, think huge guilt trip and magnify till your imagination bursts. My father is good at that, being Asian. Then he was speaking to my uncle, who has all the financial skills of a particularly bad Nick Leeson type. It seems that he wasn't looking after things well, and needed my father's help. Odd to see the interplay of emotion and cold hard financial fact between them. They parted on good terms, but my uncle was so nervous that he phoned our house three times before realizing that he was dialling the same number as last time, and that the number he should have been dialing was on the other side of the paper. See what I mean? I love the man, but I do worry about him.
Father returned after work, and I sorted out most of what I needed to do in Belfast over the phone. This was good as it gave us time to watch the Cricket. 3 Day test match between Pakistan and England, one of the best cricket matches in a long long time. England were actually putting on a show of being competent and Pakistan were doing their best to shine. I was quite good fun to watch. Very peaceful as well. Cricket has a way of lulling you that is seductive. It eats up so much time. You get up at the end of a game and realize you have been watching it for six hours non-stop. Luckily that didn't happen here. All the wickets started to come down for Pakistan, and England were knocked our with 130 runs to reach their goal of 370 before they were all out. I enjoyed it. Then I faffed about for a while, had some dinner, read some books. Watched more TV, played on the computer and took it easy until late that evening when I learnt that the Mercedes' seat had been fixed and I could drive it again.
I took it out for a spin, in to Belfast, near Queens, and got some work done. It felt great to be in the car by myself after such a long time (two years nearly) and on the way back I went into Tesco's and bought some Vienneta for celebration. We ate, I noded. More TV. Nice chat with sister, and here I am 1.49AM! Good night, sweet dreams...