Taking Stock

I'm dismayed to find that, far from getting better, I'm actually much worse. I've got a chest infection and infected sinuses, and the doctor has prescribed me antibiotics. This surprised me very much as I thought you had to be on your deathbed before they gave you the likes of Amoxicillin these days, but after he listened to my back he suggested I take a course. "How do you know it's a bacterial infection?" I asked him. I don't, he responded, but there's a 50% chance it is. "Would you take them if it was you?" I asked. "Absolutely not," he replied "unless I had pneumonia or something." That's exactly my own view, but he persuaded me to have them at home in reserve in case I got worse. In a few days if I'm better I can ignore them, and if not I have them there to take if I choose to. I'll throw them away if I don't use them, I told him, but he thought I should hang on to them for another time. It seemed a cavalier if pragmatic attitude towards my health, but one I appreciated and generally share. The doctor was devilishly attractive in a very laid-back way, and from his beautiful clothes to his handsome face and the tapered fingers idly tapping my details into his computer was almost too perfect to be true. My admiration, of course, was purely aesthetic.

Eschscholzia

My friend Ruth persuaded me to see him, and she it was who drove me there. Lunch and supper were also provided by her, and it was a curious relief to surrender to being looked after. Good friends, wonderful at the best of times, are worth their weight in gold in times of need. We go back a long, long way, she and I, to when our children were tiny, and it's a delightful coincidence that we've ended up, both of us alone, living just a few miles away from each other. On the way to the doctors I got her to stop the car outside a garden where one of my favourite flowers abounds. It's called California Poppy, Eschscholzia, and though I've admired it for years I've never managed to source a supply of the seeds or plants. I obviously haven't tried very hard because, googling this week, I have found several suppliers, and will try and grow them when my garden is made. They thrive on dry, sparse ground, so I'll have to create the conditions they like. The sight of these flowers, so delicate and fresh, so bright and somehow so happy looking, is guaranteed to make me smile and feel some of that happiness myself. Well worth the effort of making them perfectly at home somewhere near me.