Bleargh again.

Since I moved offices I’ve had more illnesses than in the previous few years. I blame the building. I’m not the only one. In a department of 100ish I usually see at least 3 or 4 ‘Soandso will not be in today’ emails each day.

I’m feeling blearghy again (yes, that’s a real word now). This time I think it’s because I’ve been feeling so run down from the toothache and subsequent removal of said tooth, and then the long tortuous coach trip across Europe and the 20km midnight hike in the wind and rain. Oh that’s right, I haven’t told you about that one yet have I, I’ll come back to that. Anyway because of all that I think my poor exhausted bod took on a special ‘here germies, come and get me’ glow, and of course they did. So I’ve got a bit of a sniffle, a rotten sore throat and I keep nodding off at my desk. I’m just waiting for some information that I need to email out to a client and then I’m going home early. I want to avoid rush hour on the M1 given how tired I am. Slaloming through the traffic at 80mph is hazardous when you’re in the peak of health, let alone dozing off at the wheel.

So the wet and windy walk…

‘Twas a dark and stormy night… Yes ok I know I’ve used that one before, but this time it actually was. It was the first day of Rock-am-Ring. The afternoon had been baking hot, so hot I’d had to apply SPF30 to prevent my summer lobster look from coming on early this year. So hot that I’d decided to leave my big fleecy coat back at the hotel. That was Mistake No 1. Mistake No 2 was believing the person who said that the hotel was only a 15 minute stroll from the festival site. Mistake No 3 was deciding that even though it was now midnight and pissing it down, and had been for about 3 hours, and even though I was soaked through and freezing cold, it would be a breeze to walk back to the hotel rather than wait another hour for the coach to show up and ferry me back to the hotel in comfort.

So at around midnight a group of us set off along the road from the festival to the hotel, in the pouring rain. I was wearing jeans, a black T-shirt and little shoes. We walked… and walked… and walked some more. There was no street lighting; there wasn’t even a pavement (sidewalk) we were just walking along the road. Through the German countryside, surrounded by forests, in the middle of nowhere. FOR 45 MINUTES! Yes, 45 minutes, not the 15 we had been so blithely promised. Not 45 minutes at my normal walking pace I may add, if I’d been going at a comfortable pace for me it would have taken about twice as long. By the time the hotel hove into view I was too tired, sore, wet, cold and miserable to say or do anything other than trudge up to the door and wait for Wookie to unlock it.

Once inside our room I stripped down. All my clothes were soaked and I had tide marks around my ankles from the mud on the road. I spent the next 20 minutes in the shower trying to get warm and clean, then dried off, got into my nightie, wrapped myself up in the big fleecy blanket I’d brought along and promptly fell asleep.

Oh, so ok, it wasn’t 20km, but it felt like it.