Not all days are good
So I'm still sick. I thought I was over it, but today I started feeling awful again. I don't have anything serious enough to stay home and lay in bed all day (doesn't that sound wonderful?), it just bad enough for me to drag myself through the motions of day while lost in an uncomfortable fuzzy headed exhausted daze and collapse into a catatonic heap once at home.
Today was a weird, inauspicious day. It was colder than usual (2C-9C! for us that's cold!), and I had to drag myself out of bed earlier than usual to give in my VAT at the Tax Office (once there, I found myself trapped in an incredible snail-like queue - both in pace and shape -, but that's another story).
On the ridiculously long and winding bus ride there, I passed by a school at the time all the kids were arriving, only to see police cars with flashing lights, an ambulance and a empty stretcher being wheeled out it. You know, the sort of thing that gives you a shock and a strange clenching feeling. I never found out what happened, but my guess is that a kid was hit by car, seeing as the school is right on top of a big busy road.
Later on in the office, as I was trying to overcome the ringing in my head and get some work slowly done, the boss arrives and the first thing he says is "Guess what? So-and-so is dead." Now that was hit straight to the solar plexus! The guy was the architect and head of the Voula town planning office. In other words a man I saw pretty often, had talked to numerous times and who for some strange reason always remember my face and greeted me when he saw me. He was also very good friends with my boss.
Ok, he was practically a stranger to me personally, but yet he wasn't old (in his early fifties), in good health and always in good spirits. A rather handsome pleasant man for his age. He lived alone and it took them two days to find his body. My first reaction to the news was "How did it happen?", our secretary asked "Did they off him?", while our civil engineer said "Did he commit suicide?". That last shocked me even more.
So, um, I'm feeling strangely raw and upset by the death of this man I hardly knew.
Today was a weird, inauspicious day. It was colder than usual (2C-9C! for us that's cold!), and I had to drag myself out of bed earlier than usual to give in my VAT at the Tax Office (once there, I found myself trapped in an incredible snail-like queue - both in pace and shape -, but that's another story).
On the ridiculously long and winding bus ride there, I passed by a school at the time all the kids were arriving, only to see police cars with flashing lights, an ambulance and a empty stretcher being wheeled out it. You know, the sort of thing that gives you a shock and a strange clenching feeling. I never found out what happened, but my guess is that a kid was hit by car, seeing as the school is right on top of a big busy road.
Later on in the office, as I was trying to overcome the ringing in my head and get some work slowly done, the boss arrives and the first thing he says is "Guess what? So-and-so is dead." Now that was hit straight to the solar plexus! The guy was the architect and head of the Voula town planning office. In other words a man I saw pretty often, had talked to numerous times and who for some strange reason always remember my face and greeted me when he saw me. He was also very good friends with my boss.
Ok, he was practically a stranger to me personally, but yet he wasn't old (in his early fifties), in good health and always in good spirits. A rather handsome pleasant man for his age. He lived alone and it took them two days to find his body. My first reaction to the news was "How did it happen?", our secretary asked "Did they off him?", while our civil engineer said "Did he commit suicide?". That last shocked me even more.
So, um, I'm feeling strangely raw and upset by the death of this man I hardly knew.