Personal Health Fail

This weekend, I have had the most dreadful cold. It began on Wednesday with a bit of a dry tickle at the back of the throat, but yesterday it was a full wracking chesty cough, with bouts of sneezing into my sleeve.

Sp apologies to anyone expecting to see me on YM last night: I was in bed most of the day yesterday, feeling like crap.

A bit better now, though I'll feel better still after a shower and a shave.

Also ...

Where did they get potatoes to throw at Merlin in the stocks?

As I Was Saying, Before I Was So Rudely Interrupted ...

In my Samhain post, I wrote this:-

You think they're going to be there for you forever.

Which will lead to my next post, shortly, in which I shall muse on the nature of life and death.

Then, beside a few minor posts, I promptly fell ill, and posting to LJ became the least of my worries.

Nonetheless, here is what I was going to say.

I was speaking to Mum about Mrs Hurd. I said "You think they're going to be there for you forever" to her. She replied "Life is cruel sometimes."

And I thought:- Yes, life is cruel. Yes, it's sometimes shite dressed up in a big pink bow and served to you with generous dollops of brute force and ignorance.

But this is the only time you can get to experience others' cruelty. Or to be cruel to others, yourself, as is your wont.

Now, while you live, is the only time you will get to experience all the elation, the fear, the pain, the guilt, the joy, the anger, the despair, and all the lust, that gets thrown at you.

It's when you're dead that we're all the same.

So life is cruel. That's not life's fault. And if you believe that pain is something to be avoided for "the sake of a quiet life," or that risk is something to be avoided "for the sake of a cushy job," then you are missing the whole bloody point.

Which is ... you are alive. Now. No guarantees that situation's going to stay this way.

Corollary To My Last Post

I'd hoped to have been busy writing new stuff for WW this year, so that I could have written something - an SAS adventure perhaps - to emphasise my point outlined in my immediately previous post. However, that well sadly seems to have dried.

So I guess I'll just have to show what I mean through my own writings, and hope that I live to get to see my own stories in print.

Writing

Just submitted a Traveller article to Mongoose Publishing for their Signs & Portents magazine. I hope it gets accepted.

Otherwise, well, we'll see.

And Now, Politics ...

I'm just saying it like it is ...

UKIP Rejects Pact With, Well, UKIP

Hard to tell the difference, one from t'other ... well, one party has less hair, I suppose. But then again ...