Man Under Cloud

If it rains, does it also pour? This question has loomed large over the past couple of days, for instead of making my way to London, for a mixture of work and the kind of once-a-year networking that is important if you freelance for the nationals and yet live only a few miles from Land's End, I was yesterday well and truly laid out by a hideous blend of nausea, tiredness and acute headaches. Rather than completing half the journey and getting as far as my parents' place in Devon, I went to bed. This morning, I got up with Karen and the boys only to spend much of the rest of it throwing up and sleeping feverishly. The afternoon was slightly better, in the sense that by then I wasn't throwing up, but I've rarely felt quite so rubbish as I did today.

Is this Lyme? I have no idea. One must be wary of seeing it at every turn, especially given that a nasty gastric flu has also swept these parts lately. Either way, though, the question remains: if it rains, does it also pour?

For on top of what is now a five month run of totally crap health, I'm also a casualty of the shake-up at the Times. Just about all media, but especially the national papers, are undergoing change at an extraordinary pace at present, as the recession eats into advertising revenue and everyone desperately tries to figure out how to make money out of the internet. Sooner or later, as this process plays itself out at the Times (my main source of work in the last year or so), a hit had to come my way.

It came in the form of the axing of my weekly Saturday column for the Times' Weekend supplement. Entitled 'The Coaster', this appeared every weekend, bar a couple, for the whole of last year. It was, if truth be told, a great gig. I got to write about the coast for money! It was almost as good as getting paid to write a book about surfing (and certainly more lucrative). Alas, though, The Coaster is no more. There's simply no space for it in the new look, trimmer, more cost-effective Weekend supplement.

Of course, as one door closes, another opens. I understand that there is vacancy on the local paper round. What better, if I can't write for the Times as a columnist, than to deliver it?

But I jest. Successful freelancing is all about having many irons in the fire, or fingers in lots of pies, but not both at the same time, and this, the bit about the fire, I have made my motto for many years now. All will be well [You don't sound convinced. Ed.] It's just that, damn it, I really enjoyed writing The Coaster, and, with a touch of melancholy about me tonight, I can't help but think that somehow or other its demise is the inevitable consequence of spinal surgery and this bloody Lyme disease.

In other words, you make your own luck - and when you're staggering about like a very, very old man, feeling like death warmed up and worried sick about your health, being lucky becomes more of a memory than a reality.

Mind you, the other day I discovered a pension I'd forgotten I had. Not a vast amount by any means, but a nice little find. It was one of those contributory things - I paid half, my employer at the time paid half. I emailed the pension company asking if I could cash it out early on the grounds of serious ill health, only to be told that I couldn't, unless my GP would certify that I'd die within a year. I asked and she said "No", quite rightly, too, for despite feeling stupidly ill I plan on being around for a couple more decades at least and, medically speaking, it can no more be said, with certainty, that I will die in the next year than that QPR will evade relegation this season to League One. But just as my quest for cash seemed doomed, a voice of reason from on high (Scotland, to be precise, the home of my long lost pension company) took pity on the plight of this particular Lymish yet surgically enhanced writer and agreed to pay 25% of the pension early anyway.

How's that for luck? [This maudlin tone doesn't suit you. Can you get back to normal soon, please? Ed.]

Comments

[OLIVIAup]

Students opine that the business term paper composing seems to be the really time consuming procedure. However, we rely on the paper writing service assistance anytime when that is needed.

[jane colley]

Alex

I am sorry to hear that you feel so rubbish. If you do have Lyme I think, from our experience, you tend to pick up lots more things that are going round as your immune system is very low. My guess is that you could well have a bug.

Do try though to be as positive about everything as possible at all times. You need to be to get well again.

Elizabeth my daughter went to hell and back as a teenager yet she says she regrets none of it and that her experiences have made her the person she is. At 21 that is a pretty mature approach to life, no regrets but lots of looking forward.

[Joanne]

Ah well your poor readers will have to make do with watching Lord Charles tour.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=81599

[Sandy]

So sorry Alex. Sounds like you have every right to feel down. Never mind the Ed. - whose blog is it anyway?! You'll find a way through all this. In the meantime - take care and keep the blogs rolling....