Letters to Eric. Part XIII

March, 2005 :

I was feeling fine at the start of the week and I can distinctly remember thinking that I was feeling fine, it was probably at that exact moment that my downhill spiral happened and here I am, on a Friday, feeling like absolute crap. I think there are over two hundred joints in the human skeletal system and every one of them is crying out for attention.

I have to apologise to my son, well in advance of his mid-thirties, for probably giving him this gift of Arthritis (my mum passed it to me and my dad had a fair old bit of it as well).

Most of the time I'm fine with the old SNR (signal to noise) level, it's something that over the last ten years I've grown quite fond of, often a reminder that I'm still here and I've learned over time to keep my feet warm and try to look after myself.

Often though, especially when I get too cocky about "how well I feel" I'll overdo things, simple things like drinking a little bit more than I should, staying up later, not getting enough sleep and just generally not looking after myself, especially in these stupid winter months (this morning was minus twenty again). So, I'm paying the piper as I type.

Things on this end are normal, for this time of the year that is. A large block of ice broke off my wheel arch and bust up the heat shield near my catalytic converter on the VW, the guy at the exhaust place took it off and said I didn’t need it but the car has a definite smell about it when it gets hot, sort of a sweet popcorn type smell, plus the centre console gets rather warm after about ten minutes driving, watch this space, I’ll let you know if it bursts into flames.

On top of my best mate’s dad kicking the bucket, my wife's good friend had a heart attack and was in hospital for a week, during that time her husband slipped on some ice and shattered his shoulder. It’s a barrel of laughs here I tell you.