Near death experience

I'm feeling better than I was. I'm not off my food anymore, but I still break out in cold sweats a few times a day and have almost zero patience. I feel a bit like Jack Dee when he admitted to Vanessa Feltz on Celebrity Big Brother that he could be an "oppressive presence". I wouldn't want to live with me. Or work with me -- as evidenced by the fact that my director last week told me in no uncertain terms to go to the doctor.

She's not someone you ignore, so, despite coming from the two aspirin and an early night school, this morning saw me sitting in a waiting room along with several dozen old women making hideous noises of one kind or another.

Everything was running very late -- I think they had a tricky customer who needed a cup of tea and a lie down -- and after half an hour I nearly walked out. This was partly because I thought, all these people are iller than me, I never wanted to come here in the first place, but mostly because there was an old bag in the corner whose particular brand of hideous noise was talking about immigrants coming 'over here' when there's 'no room'.

'I mean, why don't we build hospitals and schools in their countries, then they could go home'. I buried my nose deeper into Hello! thinking SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU AWFUL WOMAN, then thinking, no, I am still totally intolerant, so I am still a bit ill, I better hang on for the doctor.

Which was a good thing, as for the first time in my life I got a sick note. She signed me off for a week, with (probably) post-viral exhaustion, but took some blood to test for potential nasties I may have picked up in South Africa. Personally, I think I had it before I went, as I remember being in a fairly bad mood then as well.

Anyway, then I went to work to sort things out so I could come home and be signed off. For a Catholic I have a very Protestant work ethic. Four hours later I set off on my bicycle. Two minutes later, I stopped to ring B, as I was passing her house and thought I might drop in to say hello as she is on her own with a baby most afternoons.

There was no answer, so a couple of minutes later I set off again. By the time I reached Cowley Road, about 3.45, I was feeling a little green and shaky, and this was not helped by the fact the road was closed.

I detoured up Iffley Road and cut down Temple Street. On Cowley Road there was an ambulance and police cars, a bus and, ominously, a bicycle. And no way past. A big green sheet held up round someone lying on the road, and I could see paramedics doing cardiac massage. I went back down Temple Street, my own heart beating faster, wanting to ring M and say 'it's not me, don't worry, it's not me', but not doing because why would he know it was anyone?

But it was someone. She was on a bike, she got hit by a bus and she died. I don't know who she was yet, or what happened, but I missed being where she was by minutes. Would I have been there if I hadn't stopped to ring B?

I always wear a helmet, but today I left it at home by accident. If I had been there, I would have been unusually vulnerable, with my naked head and my throbbing blood test arm and my greenish tinge.

There are so many ways to feel vulnerable in this world, even when you live in a safe part of it. I am reminded of that bit in 1984, about how the realisation of your utter insignificance in the scheme of things is psychologically unbearable. Women getting killed by buses while cycling down Cowley Road is a little glimpse of that in a society where, on the whole, we experience little random violence.

*subdued*
(But then I am officially poorly)

joella