When I was in school, so many years ago, our physics teacher also taught us about personal hygiene. He was a bear of a man, and you played up in his class at your peril. Even so, he was one of my favourite teachers and his lessons were always interesting. He used to liken germs to little creatures that wore hob nailed boots, and he’d draw said creatures on the board for us.

Last week was my son’s first week back in uni, and he had 2 full days there. Tuesday, he came home complaining that a student with a foul cold had sat next to him all day. By Wednesday morning he’d succumbed to the boot-wearing germs. Around 4am on the Thursday, the little beasties had put their boots on and were doing a jig on my chest. We’ve both succumbed to the worst cold I’ve had in years; can barely talk, hacking cough, no sense of smell; I’ve not felt this bad since I had bronchitis a few years ago. Almost a week later and we’re turning a corner I feel and hope to be back on our feet by the time he has another class later this week. I offered to kick the student who shared his germs, but my son declined. How strange…

The first week in January the dog was supposed to have a bath and grooming session. I booked it late in December and had a reminder card of my booking. I took the dog in on the correct day, only to be told there wasn’t a booking for him. I showed my reminder card, they checked again, no booking. I was furious!

Tuesday my son was in the shower and I could hear a strange noise coming from the living room. There was a blanket on the sofa, and there was a puddle on it! Water was dripping through the ceiling. I put in a fault request to the agent and around 10am they called to say a plumber would call. By 2.30 there’d been no call, so I chased up. The damn plumber turned up at 5.30 which was too late to do anything useful; how convenient. He was here long enough to take the panel off the bath and leave the screws out for my son to find, confirmed the bath was okay to use, but not to use the shower over the bath due to missing tile grout and faulty bath seal. This is the third time in 20 months that we’ve been unable to use the shower. Even if he comes back Wednesday to do the work, and I’m not holding my breath, then we still won’t be able to use the shower for days to allow the grout to dry. Man, I’m sick of this house!

This week I saw the nurse about pain in my left hand which is swollen between the knuckles. I had to wait a week for the appointment, and the person in front of me took 30 minutes instead of the allotted 10 minutes. Not feeling well anyway, I was not in the best frame of mind. After all the wait, the nurse simply told me to get some ibuprofen gel and try that for a few weeks. The chemist could have told me that! A few times I’ve asked the pharmacist for advice, as we’re supposed to, and each time they’ve advised I see my GP. I wanted to see a GP however the front desk stated the nurse could deal with my problem. Give me strength…

The final straw was this morning, Wednesday, when my delightful neighbours decided to have a blazing row at half past midnight. I balled my fist (not the left one) and pounded my frustrations on the adjoining wall. They soon shut up though by this time I was too angry to sleep, and it took me hours to get back to sleep.

The experiment with having vegan/vegetarian food 5 times a week has come to a halt as far as I’m concerned. We’ve had some interesting food, and it’s been filling, however it hasn’t been satisfying if that makes sense? And I really miss fish! I trialled a casserole with soya protein, and it looked great, but the texture, and more importantly the taste, just didn’t do it for us. My son can carry on if he wishes to but I’m upping the meat to 3 or 4 times a week and introducing fish again which my son isn’t keen on. My vegetarian choices will be kept simple as that seems to work best for me. I’d put on weight which could just be Christmas fodder, but also the meals have been somewhat high in carbs which I have to watch due to the sugars. I tried it for a number of weeks, but it’s not for me.

So, we’re halfway through January, a new year and a new decade and so far, it’s been full of niggling problems; nothing major thankfully, but not a good start all the same. Hopefully things will look up soon. On the plus side, with this awful cold, I’ve lost the weight that I’d put on, and I won £10 on the lottery. Once I feel well enough, I’ll go out and cash that in and spoil myself with a fish lunch. Ooh…