Sick

My cold did not improve over the weekend. On both Friday and Saturday I woke up about every two hours during the night and so have been suffering from a lack of sleep. Generally I sleep the whole night through and it is so unusual for me to struggle to sleep and I hate the feeling of being over-tired. I was actually tempted to take the day off work on Friday but there was a meeting I wanted to go to and I also have not been off sick from work in almost 7 years and so I want to maintain that unbroken sickness record unless I have good reason to break it. I only have to make it through to the end of the week and then I should be off for three weeks anyway.

On Saturday G and I went out for lunch at a local café and as soon as we sat down I knew that we had managed to track down a local nutter. He’d left a notebook on the table next to us while he went out for a cigarette and that was filled with notes and scrawl. While he was smoking he stared in through the window at us and trying to get out attention. He then came back in and G and I ate our food and the chap got given his bill, which he then asked to be re-written item by item. We could tell this wasn’t a good sign, including when he started to query how each item could possibly charge that amount. G and I decided it was time to leave and did so just in time because he was just starting to explain that he didn’t actually have enough money to pay the bill. I think he was an unwelcome regular at the café and they were used to dealing with him. G and I decided that we might actually like to be in the company of people like that more often (despite the fact that he did rather smell) because by comparison we seemed normal.

I may be a step closer to being able to retire as G got an e-mail saying that someone with the same surname had died in Africa and they had been unable to find a beneficiary so this firm of solicitors would be happy to find a way for G to be able to claim the $28 million instead. As soon as G advised the solicitor of how much of a share they would get for ‘helping out’. It seemed remarkably kind and generous of these people to have got in touch, so I think it would be fine to let them have a few thousand pounds – what with the dollar being weak so in reality it’s only about £14 million, which is nowhere near as impressive so it won’t go anywhere near as far as £28 million would have gone. It seems that these solicitors have helped out any number of people and there are a remarkably large number of peoplewho die in Africa and then their relatives can’t be found. Anyway, should this turn out to be the road to fortune then I look forward to 2008 being the year in which I become a lady of leisure. Perhaps I’ll have a Plan B in mind just in case.