Pandora strikes

I suppose it was to be expected that at one point or another during my 4-month stay in York I would be less than robustly healthy. As it turns out, such a point has been reached now, quite possibly nudged by the combination of weather and tiredness.

Yesterday (Sunday) morning I woke up latish, but did not let that deter me from taking a short run followed by an omelet. I hope to get to the point where the thought of an omelet will set me running. I also hoped to convince my body that it was indeed daytime and, moreover, any head- and throataches were just phantom pains. (Strictly speaking, if your headache is a phantom pain, that means you no longer have a head.) That seemed to work fine.

For the rest of the day I mostly sat behind my keyboard to catch up on blogs and mails and washing, and to do some coding. Quite relaxed, in fact. The only other outdoor activity that I had planned was to go and watch Saving Mr. Banks in the cinema, but when looking up the starting time my eye fell on another option, Nebraska, which also looked interesting and was showing slightly earlier.

It turned out to be a different film than I expected. Gritty is the word I want to use here: that applies both to the photography (black-and-white, no attempt to make the world any prettier than it is, which with a setting in depressed rural US is not very pretty) and to the characters: most of them stupid, venal, unpleasant. Not very uplifting - in other words, not really a film for an escapist like myself. Possibly at some other time, with another audience and in another mood, the movie could also be quite funny. Maybe I should try this on January 1.

After another not very restful night, I can describe my current condition best by citing a song from Cabaret Ivo de Wijs:

Je kent het wel: die kriebel in je benen
Je thermometer stijgt, je hebt geen keus
Je moet naar bed, het voze virus is verschenen
En het jaagt het snot bij liters
Door de roodgeworden gieters van je neus

Je hebt de V, de V
Da's niet zo dodelijk als K, en niet zo slepend als TB
En als ze zeggen: zeg, MS is stukken erger hoor
Dan zeg jij: ja, dat zal wel wezen, maar de V komt veel meer voor