Remember over
here when I told you that I'd update the beginning in several parts? Today is Part II. If this were Sesame Street it would be brought to you by our hard-to-predict cleaning staff schedule at our hotel and the drink,
Pimm's. I'm sitting in a pub a block from our "hotel" and sucking back an obligatory drink since I can't be in our room. More on that later...on to The Sickening!
As you'll recall, we had a lovely day in the countryside with Claire and returned to London. I was none the wiser, but something was stewing. Monday morning I woke up feverish and generally feeling ill. This was the day we were supposed to go shopping for Christmas presents, and if you know me at all, you know I don't give up a shopping trip lightly. Well, I dragged my ass into the shower; there's nothing a shower and brushing your teeth can't fix, right? Wrong. I dried off and marched right back to the bed and succumbed to the pillows. James didn't know what to make of it, but he's been well trained for this moment and jumped to my aid by getting Lucozade (think British Gatorade) and crackers. With provisions by my side, James left to do the shopping.
Honestly, the rest of the day was a blur of drinking liquid, nibbling crackers and reading the thermometer (good thinking on packing that versus shipping it over). James returned and I tried to rally purely because James had bought tickets to an in-store acoustic session with Gruff Rhys. I didn't get to go. Surprise.
That night I had remarkable sweating and temperature highs, but I greeted Tuesday feeling better than the day prior so I dressed and we went out. It was hard to even remotely enjoy Covent Garden and eventually we turned for home. Things got progressively worse from there. Up until this point my sick had been relegated to fever and "feeling icky" but wonders never cease and I learned the true meaning of collywobbles. Leave it to the British to come up with a cutesy and sanitized word for diarrhea. So now, unable to venture out of the sight line of a toilet, I had to make an even harder decision than the one the night before: do I dare chance getting on the tube and going to the Paul Weller show that we bought tickets for so many months ago? It broke my heart to lay prone on the couch while James headed out to the show. He insists that it wasn't as good as he'd hoped, but I think he was being kind. Paul opened the show with the only two songs I wanted to hear, so if that's really true, I guess I didn't miss much...just, you know, a British rock icon. No big D. *sigh*
In the midst of all of this, I kept trying to self diagnose from my bed. If you can believe it, at one point in my fever-induced hysteria, I looked up H1N1 and sugar withdrawal. Clearly I was going through one of those. My ibuprofen-addled brain couldn't think of any other reasonable diagnosis.
Wednesday was more of the same...sick as a kitten, eating almost nothing, living on Lucozade. Toilet, toilet, toilet. I was beginning to get really worried about how I was going to manage the trip to France the next day.
Thursday arrived and I think it bears pointing out my history with illness. Growing up in my parents' house was a bit of an odd split. My mother is an intensive care nurse, so if you're not hooked up to a ventilator and on death's door step, there isn't much sympathy to be found, but at least she knew what to do. As a shift worker, however, she was asleep all day. My dad, on the other hand, is unfailingly sympathetic and accommodating, however when I was home ill, he was often at work and! more often than not, he just wanted to know, "Well, have you taken anything for that?" I also wasn't home sick often as a child due entirely to my mother's outlook that one cannot possibly be that sick if you're not confined to a hospital bed and that sick days aren't an option. Seriously. My mother doesn't take sick days, or, when she does, it's rare enough to cause concern. So I've grown up with that mindset.
But Thursday I requested a doctor. We had to be on the tube at 2pm (for nearly an hour), headed to Claire's so that we could be at the Portsmouth ferry terminal in time for our overnight ferry to Le Havre. James didn't want to admit it at the time, but he was going over scenarios for how else we could get to Chazieux later in the week, once I'd had a chance to recover. Thankfully, through private care and the grace of some magical Lucozade dragon or entity, James got me an appointment for noon. Let me tell you, I've never been this sick in my life. Ever. James literally sat at my bedside and forced me to eat half a bowl of oatmeal. He was my own little cheerleader and kept up his stream of encouraging words while I weakly spooned this rare solid meal into me. It was incredibly touching and this is when I realised he also knew this was the sickest he'd ever seen me. So we bundled up and went to the prettiest doctor's office I've ever seen. I kept wanting to take a photo to show people, but In my state it didn't even occur to me that I had my iPhone in my pocket until we were leaving, so it's just the staircase.
Let's pretend this shows you way more of the building and how pretty it really was all covered in intricate tiles, ok? I was sick. Very, very sick. The doctor was delightful, asked more questions than I expected and had a far more holistic approach than I'm used to in a physician. His diagnosis was a gastrointestinal infection and his memorable statement was, "Welcome to London, a cesspool of disease!" Oh. Um, thank you? So, at the doctor's office in England they can actually get you your pills on site. Like, in the room. So he produced a packet of pills to kill everything in my gastrointestinal tract and then a king's ransom in Immodium. He also prescribed me yogurt. As much of it as I could stand as well as probiotic pills to give me an additional boost at rebuilding all that good bacteria the first set of pills was going to obliterate.
We grabbed probiotics and started packing for the trip. Correction: James packed for the trip. I laid in bed trying to think logically about outfit choices but really couldn't get past packing my hot water bottle (did I mention I was cold constantly from the fever too?). I downed my Immodium and we headed out to Claire's where she pronounced me as green as she'd ever seen. I went straight to the couch while they sorted out the car. It was pathetic. I was urged through another half bowl of oatmeal and then deposited in the back of her car like some final piece of luggage.
My travel blanket got lots of cuddle time this trip
The ensuing car ride was also a total blur. I know we stopped at a Tesco (grocery store), but I wouldn't leave the car. So they left me to sleep in the back seat of a car in the middle of the parking lot. Seriously, if this was a thousand years earlier (maybe even five hundred), my clan would have left me for dead. We also stopped at a pub in Portsmouth to get dinner where I joked that I looked like the Ghost of Terminally Ill Christmas. I know, tres dramatic. We have an unhealthy sense of humour where illness is concerned, once again thanks to my mother's career as a nurse. At the pub they kindly made my packet of oatmeal and watered down my apple juice. Truth be told, this didn't go as smoothly as that and it took quite a bit of time for James to explain to them what he wanted. So I ordered side veg as well, you know, to make it worth their while to have a biochemical disaster of a human sitting in their dining room.
As luck would have it, we were upgraded to a cabin with a toilet on the ferry. I went straight to bed.
Getting on the ferry - we went up that crazy steep ramp
By the time we hit France I was feeling a little better, but still in a state that could best be described as permanently groggy. Roadside toilet stops aside, I passed in and out of sleep for the entire drive. At this point I still hadn't told my parents I was sick. I figured there was no sense worrying them and, given at my mom burst into tears the first time we chatted on FaceTime once we'd arrived in the UK, it was best not to alarm them.
This guy was my companion in the back seat for the trip - apparently he is to clean the windscreen. He looks like the French cousin of NMC's Tigger
Upon arrival at Chazieux, I was kindly drawn a bath and Ginny, James' aunt (Claire's mother), was given permission to fuss over me as much as she felt fit. I think we were both happy for that - Ginny loves to care for people and having only James as a caretaker is wearying. Plus, Ginny is adorable and lovely, so she made me happier just by being around.
So that's the gist of it....in many, many long paragraphs. I spent nearly a week in a desperate state of illness and started joking the England was trying to kill me. What did I learn from being sick abroad? I know way more about UK television now. Also, when you're sick, everyone has an opinion on how you should handle said illness. And finally, I learned that James does a pretty good job at keeping me alive.
Whoops. Sorry for going AWOL, kids. The last three weeks have been a super intense whirlwind and I think the best way to take stock is in four parts.
I will tackle these parts like so:
Part I: Arrival
Part II: The Sickening
Part III: Christmas in France
Part IV: Observations
I did actually start on several of these entries during the time they were happening, but nothing is ready, so let's go through my notes, shall we? I have photos to go with all of this, but I can't figure out how to make Blogsy cooperate with Instagram and my iPad at the moment, so I'll migrate them to Picasa and give you a very photo-heavy post tomorrow.
Part I: ArrivalI gotta say, landing in London was pretty awesome - I've never flown into the city and the countryside looked spectacular from up above. The sprawling lawns and gardens of some of the castles/manors were fun to try and spot, even on very little sleep (yes, we were subjected to the standard crying baby for the duration of the flight). We queued in Heathrow for an eternity to get to customs and then were told by the overly good-natured customs official that in the future we can use the express UK nationals line because James is a citizen. His status trumps mine. That will come in handy. What I also hadn't expected was having to declare my occupation on my landing card. A day prior at the dentist in Canada I also had to list my occupation. Because they knew me there, I chose to write "kept woman" but I didn't think that the UK Border Agency would find this at all amusing....so I wrote "consultant" - more on that in a later post!
After collecting our bags we got a cab and started the journey to our hotel. I really can't say I felt like we'd moved to London at that point, but man was I happy....even without coffee. Our hotel leaves quite a bit to be desired and I have a lot to say on the subject, so let's just leave that for the time being. A quick nap and shower and we were ready to go. We stopped for food at EAT and ended up sitting in front of a stage actor of notable fame....of course, given that neither of us know much about British stage, all we could come up with is "Oh man, I've seen him before" but not his name. Regardless, he had a lovely and soothing speaking voice and I spent more time listening to him than James.
We hit the ground running with tickets to see Miles Kane and Kasabian at the O2. It was a huge stadium show, but we had floor tickets and were very early. I was totally in my glory two people from the front at the center of the stage. Can I just tell you right now, if you haven't heard Miles Kane's album, you ought to do so. It is easily my album of 2011. He was phenomenal - I can't think of a better way to move to London. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was the ridiculous behaviour of the crowd at the show. I should have known that a country known for hooliganism at football matches wouldn't be tame when it came to concerts. Kasabian is the biggest rock band in the UK right now, so it was going to be rowdy, but I had no idea that it was common to throw half full cups of liquid up to the front of the crowd....and god, I know some of those cups weren't beer. I got pelted right in the head and was instantly soaked along with the guy behind me. I turned to him and he immediately made smell his head to figure out if it was beer or worse. I couldn't quite tell, so I'm going to go with beer. Yeah, beer. That makes me less inclined to want to throw up.
Kasabian hit the stage and the entire front 60 rows of people were thrown into some sort of jumping/mashing frenzy that I seriously haven't experienced since my punk days. Three songs into Kasabian's set and I forced James to bee-line it for the edge of the crowd. Let's just say, that was a good move. We unknowingly placed ourselves on the outskirts about 40 feet from the raised platform to the side of the stage and the VIP area. My attention started to wander and I looked up to the platform to see Miles Kane enjoying the show....with Noel Fielding. That set me to smiling....a lot. Then I glanced back at the VIP area behind us and there was Rupert Grint. I thought my little jet-lagged brain was going to explode at the overall awesome of the evening. Some leggy blond model/actress tottered down from the platform and past me (can't seriously say who she was), but she smelled divine...and had toilet paper on her stiletto. I alerted her to this in a very matter-of-fact "I'm not phased by you" sort of way and was rewarded with a shoulder-squeeze thank you that left her lingering fragrance. Seriously, this woman smelled incredible. In all, if London was trying to impress me on my first day, she'd done her job.
With Thursday night in the bag, we slept.Friday had us unpacking and then taking care of little details like bank accounts and cell phones. At the bank I had to fill in my occupation yet again, however because she couldn't pin down an income amount for me, our account manager insisted that I be listed as a homemaker. So in three days I'd been a kept woman, a consultant and a homemaker.....identity crisis!
The Saturday before Christmas James did something very selfless. He took me to Hamley's at a detriment to his health and sanity. I'm thankful that he did, so that I could immerse myself in the mayhem. Oxford and Regent St rounded out our afternoon before we nipped home to change and then speed off again to visit James' cousin, Jo and her husband along with a couple of their friends for a Christmas dinner. It was traditional, from what I gather, and everyone was really welcoming to us and inquisitive.
The highlight of the weekend came on Sunday when we took the tube out to visit James' other cousin, Claire. Upon arrival in a a much more rural setting, Claire whisked us off to the yard where we got to meet Billy, her pretty little horse. The weather wasn't great, otherwise I think we'd have spent more time there, but I'm going to have plenty of time to visit with Billy in the coming years. While out in the "country" we got to eat lunch at a proper country pub. James was in heaven and I wasn't far behind! The Yorkshire puddings alone were massive and so yummy. The Cricketers Pub will be seeing us again before long.
This is pretty good place to end Part I. I promise I won't do day-by-day reports on the following three weeks, but the first week really does stand out in my mind and bears telling. Once we're all up to speed on my goings on here I'll get topical and tell you all about this zany country and what I love...along with what I miss.
Photos to come - promise!
