Breakthrough

I'm to have company! After a week of seeing no one, living in self-imposed purdah as I try to keep my germs to myself, my sister has broken through my defences and is coming to stay. How strange it will be, to talk to someone who is actually in the room, eyeball to eyeball. I feel a bit like Miss Havisham, covered in cobwebs and dust, surrounded by untouched squalor. How the dirty dishes pile up when you're not doing them regularly, not quite plentiful enough to put the dishwasher on for, or so I tell myself. And the table, so easy to clear, is covered in detritus - Italian grammars and dictionaries, binoculars, books, unopened post, finished and half-finished crosswords. I still haven't changed the sheets from the visitor last weekend (was it really only then? Seems like months since the house suddenly burst into life and laughter), but the fresh lot are ironed and waiting in the airing cupboard. It's another lovely day, and I shall fetch the paper and then decamp to the summerhouse. Yesterday I couldn't resist a little gardening, and so I sank to my kneeler and feebly flicked a few weeds around with my trowel before collapsing back into the heat of the room and falling into a deep sleep. It felt so good though, to be outdoors and making a start on bed tidying. My head isn't throbbing quite so much this morning. Dare I think that I might be emerging from my wraps to shake my wings in the sun once more? No. Writing crap like that tells me I must still have a temperature. My critical faculties haven't completely deserted me yet.