Oh pooh....
My plans for the Thames Festival have been derailed. Last week's threatening sore throat has blossomed into a full-blown horrible fluey cold with all the trimmings. I managed to get my usual Saturday shop done yesterday, including flowers (fuchsia-coloured asters*), a nice new shirt and some fabric for the fabric mountain, but when I got in I fell onto the sofa like a pole-axed buffalo, and remained there for several hours, having weird dreams that involved snakes and ancient Romans, getting up only for long enough to swallow some more cold pills and crawl into bed. Today I feel pretty dreadful, and will clearly not be going anywhere. Pooh. Especially pooh since it is a very beautiful day, and would be perfect for going. Damn.
It did start me thinking about how regularly I've been going to the festival, and I realised that I have been every year since 2000. All the 9/11 commemorative stuff this year reminded me of my visit in 2001. My first festival the year before had been really fun, so I had borrowed my niece and nephew, but when the day finally came, it was all rather subdued, with no planes flying, the fireworks cancelled and a general air of glum apprehension. We mooched along the foreshore, poking at the pebbles, and Katie asked me in a worried way if there was going to be a war, and I couldn't honestly say. In the event, there was a war, and her father wangled his way into going off off to it three times, but came back pretty well each time. And now she's studying in Amsterdam, her brother is painting and doing whatever he does with computers, and the war is still going on.
No visit this year, anyway, but next year I will have a shiny new knee to try out.
*come to think of it, have I ever seen a fuchsia-coloured fuchsia?. I think not.
It did start me thinking about how regularly I've been going to the festival, and I realised that I have been every year since 2000. All the 9/11 commemorative stuff this year reminded me of my visit in 2001. My first festival the year before had been really fun, so I had borrowed my niece and nephew, but when the day finally came, it was all rather subdued, with no planes flying, the fireworks cancelled and a general air of glum apprehension. We mooched along the foreshore, poking at the pebbles, and Katie asked me in a worried way if there was going to be a war, and I couldn't honestly say. In the event, there was a war, and her father wangled his way into going off off to it three times, but came back pretty well each time. And now she's studying in Amsterdam, her brother is painting and doing whatever he does with computers, and the war is still going on.
No visit this year, anyway, but next year I will have a shiny new knee to try out.
*come to think of it, have I ever seen a fuchsia-coloured fuchsia?. I think not.