Black hour of 7:30am. Set my alarm half an hour later than normal. Cup of tea and wrap myself in my quilt. Sit on the edge of my bed, nose dripping and sinuses blocked, wondering if I should take the day off work. Maybe I'll feel better when I'm in.
Leave the house at 8:00am. The outside looks shimmery and bright, but raw too, overlaid with a purified essence of the December side of winter. Sunset red sky. Twilight won't leave this horizon. Glimpses of the workshops as I walk down the Mews; planks of wood in messy ranks, leaning against and obscuring walls. The smell of nails and woodwork class at school.
Industrial lessons, factory memory.
There's a van on Richardson Road, and beyond the van a daytime street lamp shines a dull orange against the fresh sky. Carcasses hang down from hooks at the back of the van. Decapitated animals saying here we are, here is your dinner and I don't know what animals they are because they have no heads. I imagine their pink raw scent but fortunately can't smell them as my nose is too blocked. Cheery butchers boys swings the carcasses onto their shoulders. Cold flesh on a bright morning. This is where my pork chops come from, I think, this is my dinner.
Down New Church Road and all the trees are bare now, and without leaves I notice how many branches there are. A forest of branches, bunches of branches, all bony bouquets, autumn-black ink splashes against the watercolour sky.
By the time I get to work, my nose won't stop running, and my eyes seem to want to stream, overflowing sinus-blocked rivers. Too hot and too cold, and that constant pitter-patter-clutch of a headache. After an hour of calls made difficult by a constant need to blow my nose and wipe my eyes, I admit defeat, and for the first time since I worked at the petrol station and had the flu back in 2005, I take a day off sick and come home.
