bugger

Am most disgruntled with current physical state. On Wednesday, having no food in the house (hubby working, me on sofa with hot wheat packs), we rang for a Chinese - the healthy option of veggie special fried rice - only the fat content caused a gall-bladder attack! Brilliant.

Thursday started out with more promise and I even made it to my favourite bookshop where Stephen Fry's autobiography Moab is my Washpot was waiting patiently to be collected, gathering dust. I realised that I have been proper right poorly for 8 bleedin' weeks! Anyway, my favourite bookshop is rather special, not simply because I worked there while doing my degree, but because purchases are wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. In the winter a real coal fire blazes in the downstairs sales floor, and there is no till - just a purchase ledger and pencil, and an ancient wooden cash drawer. I remember panicking in my first few weeks as percentage discounts and so on all have to be done in your head and mental maths is not my forte by any means!

The owner is a tall, lean gentleman, smartly dressed, and with a exceedingly large grin. The staff are wonderful - knowledgeable about books, helpful and warm. Such is their reputation that they have customers from as far afield as Geneva.

The building is an old Victorian (I think!) house with 3 floors and an attic. Downstairs is reserved for new books and anything not on the shelf can be ordered speedily. Up the narrow creaking stairs, with cabinets stuffed full of second hand treasures in every available nook and cranny, there is the Children's Room, where owls have been known to visit for Harry Potter launches, with space for children to sit and browse. The owner's office is on this level too, and up more stairs there are more and more rooms, stacks of books, hallways lined with shelves... it's like an Aladdin's cave. I never made any money working there, as I'd spent it on whatever little stack of treasures I'd discovered that day!

But I digress. After the bookshop, and a big bear hug from the owner, I did a few other outstanding errands and then went shopping with my mum. Bliss. Outsidiness. Only a few feet into the first shop and my gall-bladder kicked off again - this time from humous we'd bought not expecting a tub to have a whopping great 28g of fat! I don't know how I managed to drive home but I found swearing loudly with a long slow rhythm really helped. After much crying and rocking, swearing and howling, several doses of morphine and a diclofenac, it subsided. All this, plus diarrhea, frequent cold sweats, constipation, colic, some vomiting and nausea... leaves me thinking...

... I must still have some awful karma to address from a previous life!

Never mind. Maybe it's a lesson or something to build strength and character? No matter how bad it's been, I have only ever thought of life, of wanting to live, of not giving up. I look up (no idea why 'up'!) and inform the universe, firmly, that I don't care what it throws at me, I still choose life. I want to live.

Although following this PH Diet, and existing on raw veg, fruit, no tea/meat/bread/dairy does make me a bit shaky in my resolve. (Actually, I've not gone all out but have cut out those foods 'almost', so that 80% or more is the healthy alkaline stuff, and 20% is acid producing.)

Today has been the best day so far... everything's been calm with the old body; not too much pain anywhere, no nausea, able to go out looking at laptops (hmm!) and had a visitor to boot. I was in a very good mood...

... and then I checked my email and realised that the novel racer's meet is next week and I can't go to London because I can't even have a riding lesson, or drive for more than half an hour, and I need a nap in the afternoon still.

Bugger! Next time!