Sick Day

I've been off work today - the 24-hour knock-out cold bug has found me. And there's something very odd about staying home in the middle of the week, half-dazed; it's like a flashback to student life - only this time with central heating that works and a fridge that contains fresh vegetables.

It's hard to believe that in three days time, December will have arrived. Perhaps that old trope about time speeding up on the slip road towards 40 is true. Yesterday I told my friend Estelle that this year had been the worst of my life, but if that is true, how come it has flown by? Shouldn't it have dragged along, painfully, like waiting in the queue at the Indian High Commission for a visa?

Instead, since the turn of the year, there has been this and that and a great birthday party in February. And since Gilly's passing, there have been events to organise and things to do, and I managed to get by without having to take time off work. Plus two, soon to be three, trips abroad to three different continents. I have what can best be described as a wretched carbon footprint...

The reason is simple - I realised today that I can barely remember any of it.

Seriously. Don't ask me for anything detailed that happened this year and expect an instant answer. I just have random memories.

Getting a lift from Naz through south London at eleven in the morning after a long flight from Houston, heading to the Royal Free Hospital to see Gilly for one last time.

Checking into the Copthorne Hotel near Gatwick and then out again about three hours later because of a severely delayed flight to South Africa, knowing that in the space of 12 hours we had managed to travel no more than ten miles.

The last hill on the road to Southend.

Coming back on the train from Leamington Spa with a clammy whisky-hangover and stopping at Wembley Stadium's new station - before the stadium had even opened. Unsurprisingly, no-one got out.

I seem to have travel memories. Actually, no, I seem to mainly have airport memories. And in a couple of weeks, I can add some more.

So tell me again... who exactly are you?