Rough

Today I became a whippet like Hugo and slept on and off for hours. There's something lovely about giving in to a bug and putting obligations and plans on hold. Less lovely is a head that feels like a boiling pumpkin with seeds rattling around manically and flesh pulped and bruised. I haven't been able to settle to anything much when I've been awake, my chosen books being either too demanding or ineffably silly. Last night I watched the last episode of series 2 of The Crown, but am so diminished intellectually that I might start again from the very beginning. Just the thing for a bout of illness. It has been superb, untruths and all. Especially moving was the gentle, near wordless reconciliation between the Queen and her feckless, selfish husband who has been behaving badly for many years, leaving her lonely and hurt. He didn't say sorry, but he did say he was her liege man of life and limb, repeating his vows from her Coronation. He knelt before her and put his head in her lap, and she rested her own head on his. Did it really happen? Who knows. But with the benefit of knowing how this story ends the writer has Philip say that some people seem to be good but are really shits, while others seem to be rotten but are solid and loyal and true. And so he has proved to be. Hallelujah!

I ran out of the small sachets of flammable material that I use to light the fire, and had to resort to twisted newspapers like in the old days. My local woodburner shop is out of them, and ordering on the internet I thought I would have to wait days for them to come. But no, they arrived in the post today, a large cylindrical package of 100 that will see me through to the end of winter. My oil is running low and I have to make a decision to buy soon at a very high price or wait and hope it goes down. Since 2009 the cost of a litre of oil has gone from 60p to 30p and now up to 49p. That's over £500 for a full tank of 1000 litres. The price of oil depends on so many things from OPEC oneupmanship to sanctions agains Iran and war in Syria among others. And at the bottom of all these things is greed and the wish for power. They should remember the rich man and the camel allegory. There may not be a heaven but there is such a thing as a state of grace. Or don't they have that in Islam?