As A Parrot

Iblame the school.

I’ve never been prone much to illness. Ithink after the hell of neuralgia until my mid-twenties (whereupon it just plainstopped attacking), and the gout now – which is better because it’s distanced,not in my head – mere sniffs and sneezes gave up on making an impact on me.I’ve lived in a flat so cold that a pipe bursting actually froze itself ratherthan drip and not a hint of a cold. Flu is what men get of course, or a cold asit’s more commonly known but the point is that for many years sickiness and thecommon ague were strangers to me. As an aside, stinging nettles don’t bother meeither.

But since the sprouts have been inschool I’ve suffered the odd one-day night-burns-it-away lurgie. The sprouts toohave gained some of that. Certainly when the school is laid low by a sweepinghorror they’re in there, wondering where everyone has gone, and enjoying theirday like anyone in the first reel of 28 Days Later. Or Day of the Triffids ifyou prefer, and I certainly do. They sit there flipping through books whilstzombies lurch about, occasionally twatting them with the broom at playtime.

So when on Thursday night my youngestBoswell came down with yuckiness it was to stern denials on her part. Boswellalthough but five will loudly declare to any mere injury that she is ‘brave andbold’. She never cries, even when bloody and torn. My eldest Catnip whilst moregirly than a dozen flower-fairy princesses says no such thing and though willcry at bump or scratch, never for long, and never to a sniffle, which she alsonever suffers. So Boswell was laid low (and much to her displeasure), and tothe extent she denied it all and went to school anyway where as I suppose Ishould have expected, nearly no one else was. Apart from her big sister, who inbetween reading by tallow light spent the day planting daisies on the fields ofdead. Crows fear her and leave her gifts. When I say she’s like a fairy itsworth pointing out that it’s an Unseelie one.

Inevitably Bosswell was not long thereand I had to collect her with the aid of a machete and the ancestral shotgun.Muttering and staggering home at a slug’s pace the walking dead fled, and beingproper shuffling dead that involved a lot of slapstick falling over. Copious amountsof duvets and never-nice-enough water later and Catnip decides she is also ill,all the time whilst Bosswell denies it, picking at the corpse of a puppy thatlooked at her in a funny way.

Soon and the world is a sickly place andI... am not. So it’s been a few days of up and down stairs, fetching, readingaloud, all the while being grumbled at for being merely worn out. The villagehas gone to the dead and somehow the orange juice is, I quote, wrong.

The apocalypse sucks.

Don’t let anyone tell you different.