Hello. How have you been? As I write this, a week has passed since the first piece I've written in a while appeared in the post. I've done nothing with it, nothing. I fully intended to share it in various places, most specifically with person I specifically wrote it for. I also had every intention of replying to the responses I got, although in my defence I've tried several times to visit the page and do so but I keep getting greeted with a gateway timeout error. I know how the site feels, I've had a bug myself. Nothing major, I'm not a comedic stereotype from the 1990s. I am, however a child of the 1990s, which means that I am now 43 years sold ¹ so a relatively minor bug takes a bit more out of me that it would have done 10 years ago. After I've spent a day at work talking with my hoarse voice and breathing through my blocked nose I don't have much energy left for anything much. I consider myself very lucky.

In order to explain why I feel fortunate in this respect I must first tell you about a bee that I recently met. Am I right in thinking that bees outside of the hive are generally male? Someone on here is bound to know. Anyway, I don't want to misgender anyone and practising with pronouns won't do me any harm, so for now I'll stick with they. I was on my way to find out that I couldn't give blood on account of the bug I mentioned, when I spotted a bee on the pavement. They were just sitting there doing nothing, which I thought rather odd. I'd also read that sometimes bees are just tired, so you shouldn't disrupt them too much. Still, I was worried that where they were, the bee might get trampled on, so I bent down to check, presuming they would fly off. They did not fly off. Instead, they climbed onto my hand and made their way up my arm and onto the lapel of my jacket. I had accidentally adopted a bee. I wandered around for a bit, messaging Raven for advice, because she always knows what to do with animals, and trying to find a flower for my bee to sit on. Unfortunately for me, for both of us, really, I was wandering around a light industrial estate in early November. I had already failed to donate any much-needed blood, and now I was struggling to find pollen as well. With any luck, I have succeeded at least in providing photographic illustration of my story, and you'll be able to see that I eventually found a resting place for the bee. When I went back to check a few minutes they had gone, so all's well and everything.

If you're starting to feel that I' m two paragraphs in and have said relevant to my alleged subject, don't panic, I'm getting there as we speak. I picked this bug up from wherever it was² and, naturally, passed it on to Raven. Raven is, among other things, immuno-compromised, which means if I pick up a cold she'll definitely get it, and whatever she gets from me will hit her harder, as if the bug was just using me as a practise run for its real target. Animals like Raven, we can't pass within 30 feet of a dog, cat, squirrel or sometimes even wild bird that doesn't want to come over a say hello. Either she seems naturally safe or (my personal theory) they are curious to find out what she is. Whatever the truth, if sparrows like her I see no reason why bacteria shouldn't also be keen, and they certainly are. This bug in particular bedded down and set up camp for a good week, wandered off for a bit and then came back again. Twice. So Far.

And here, finally, is my point. I carried on working through a bug because I am a hero and because it didn't really affect me that badly. Raven, who already has chronic fatigue and asthma amongst her many ailments, (she is the only person I know to have completed the eye-spy book of unusual diseases) was flattened. She basically slept for a week and, as a consequence, I had to carry her around in my jacket like a pollen-starved bee until she finally recovered a bit. You see? It all links up. In my last blog I talked about unpredictability. This, in its way, was entirely predictable. Bug does the rounds, everyone gets it, they all moan for a bit and show varying indications of how much about germ hygiene they took in from that major worldwide pandemic we all went through, from the occasional mask all the way to my boss who sneezes in his hands, rubs his hands together and goes back to very slowly typing an email. The immuno-compromised, who paid FULL ATTENTION during the covid crisis, are knocked for six and lose days or even weeks that they can ill afford. In Britain we learned two lessons during lockdowns that were drummed into us at the time and now seem to have been largely forgotten. One is that we are extremely lucky to have a National Health Service seemingly willing to risk their lives and work themselves into the ground doing a job for which they are underpaid and grossly underappreciated. The other is we have a section of society who are vulnerable to airborne infections diseases and need, as a consequence, to be properly looked after.

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