QUITE AN EFFORT!

(my) Big Brother was watching us for this customary promenade picture

In spite of my customary post-journeying fatigue, the little holiday jaunt now seems far away. Valiantly struggling against my post-exertional malaise, I seem to have accomplished much since returning to my cherished hearth and home on Thursday afternoon.

Cathy had carefully nurtured the fish, in both pond and aquarium, as well as the tomato plants, in our absence and, only one of the chilli plants was gasping for water. ‘Tis incredible the restorative power of H2O, although I must admit to a preference for rather more vinous liquids.

Friday found me rinsing the pond filters, dismantling and cleaning the pump from the same piscine habitat, and nervously manning the skillet (the first time for over a week) to produce a spicy salmon pasta dish. I’m sure the sight of my halo must dazzle any beholder. What else have I achieved, you may well wonder; I shamefacedly admit to destroying and having to replace three of the four rotor blades on my new and more sophisticated / powerful model helicopter (acquired whilst visiting my brother).

Meantime, I’ve managed to restore my oldest PC, following a major system collapse and, have also struggled since last evening to overcome a major problem with Helen’s new laptop. For this latter instance I had to resort to backing up all the documents, and Outlook Express files, to an external disk. In fact, the problems were such that I could only back up the documents over the network as the laptop refused to co-operate with the external drive! Having backed up these files, I set to wiping the C drive and re-install the machine to its factory settings. Much re-installing of programmes and configuring of the network was subsequently required.

Come to think of it, a minute amount of my holiday time was also spent fixing a computer for my brother, primarily sorting out its sluggishness by cleaning and defragging the registry before adding some more RAM. The machine certainly seemed to hurtle through its tasks with three times the memory installed.

But what of the holiday; if you really must know a very enjoyable time was had by all. Just for the pleasure of visiting my brother and sister-in law, I incidentally put myself through a kind of hell that only fellow sufferers from panic attacks and a dislike of travel could understand.

It made a really great change to visit the seafront each day in such affable company. The journey there was the furthest I’d travelled in a single day for longer than I can remember, in itself that makes it a major milestone. It was also a bonus that the Sussex Model Centre was in such close proximity but, my first two attempts to cross the threshold of this emporium were thwarted by an absence of sufficient physical or emotional stamina!

Having travelled down on the Friday, we were treated to a wonderful Indian meal in Worthing, courtesy of Linda (Jan’s sister) and her better half Russell. (That’s not to say that our hosts Dave and Jan had not previously pandered to our need for victuals; these were in plentiful supply!) Yet another first for me, to dine out in a busy restaurant for a couple of hours, a feat I had been unable to contemplate during most of the past four years.

The morning that we were due to set off on our excursion South, a severe panic attack almost led to me calling the whole thing off and, as history always has a knack of repeating itself, I spent an horrendous half-hour in the stygian gloom of panic, nausea and stomach cramps on the first leg of our journey home but, I (almost) willingly admit that the effort was worth it!

This post also appears on 'Mal's Murmurings' and 'Hirsute Antiquity'