Flu-jab Friday

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my yesterblip. Here's another view of the same Start Bay, but taken from a little further round the coast, and from a moving car. The beach is Blackpool Sands, taken late in the afternoon, hence the long shadows. I'd popped into Dartmouth for a flu vaccination. I consider it ten pounds well spent (at Lloyds chemist) - £2.50 cheaper than Boots, I discovered, when I 'shopped around' online! Rang my local branch and they did it straight away.

I've only had flu once. It was February 2000. And I was ill for three weeks. The first week I simply wanted to die. I literally crawled to the bathroom when necessary; I couldn't sit up or stand, let alone walk. The second week, I still longed for oblivion, but tried to read in between sleeps. By the end of the third week, simply the sight of my book's cover made me nauseous - it became the one book I started but never finished.

So if someone appears on Twitter (where I've never been) or Facebook, telling the world they've got flu, I can only infer they're wrong. No-one with flu could surface strongly enough or long enough to tweet. I'm glad to have had my vaccination against the latest strains from the US, Hong Kong and Australia.

Like the view that I've blipped two days running, that could be taken for granted by locals, it's easy to take our health for granted. About ten years ago I wrote this poem, which has never been published. If you're still reading, then you'll be reading it for the first time:

Virus

Virus does right to begin with a V,
Virulent, violent, vile.
I finger its sign but it’s stronger than me,
Wicked and wasting and wild.
V is for victory over each vein,
Each vestige of life it will visit with pain,
DNA-variant, vagabond, vice,
Vengeful, vindictive, a viper with verve,
Verminous, vomitive, cruel as ice,
Vigorous villain attacking each nerve.
I finger its sign but it vanquishes me:
Virus does right to begin with a V.

© Celia Warren 2017

Have a happy and healthy weekend, blipmates!