Sickness at Christmas.

After we recovered from our trip we caught up with friends and relatives, and got back to doing the usual things in preparation for Christmas. The weather was very cold and frosty, but got warmer as Christmas approached. Peter had asked us if we would like to spend Christmas with him. We wanted to do this, but Mas got increasingly tired until he came down with a virus and became ill, and had an awful cough.

I made a brief foray to Brent Cross shopping centre, which was like a descent into hell ( I hate shopping at the best of times), and finished my Christmas shopping, as usual resolving to do next year's Christmas shopping in February. By this time Mas had lost his voice (unbelievable!), and one of our neighbours visited, and left shocked when he tried to talk to her.

Pete came to stay with us on Christmas Eve, and ominously he was feeling very tired too. In short order he came down with the same kind of illness as Mas. Despite all this illness, we had a cosy time, eating by candlelight and watching TV around the fire. I did get the feeling sometimes that I was running a kind of gourmet hospital, and from time to time, if I thought my throat seemed sore I would sip some neat, strong, rum to sterilise my throat (if it had not been medicinal I would have had a G & T), and it seemed to work. We cheered ourselves up listening to some of the jazz compilations Toby had put together a year or so ago, and the one we kept repeating was the Hi de Hi song by Cab Calloway.

Things continued in this way until Mas began to feel a bit better, and Pete returned home despite still feeling ill, on my birthday, December the 30th. Maheena called in with a present and card,(her son has his birthday on the same day), and later Diane and then Toby phoned telling me of his recent trip to Belize.