Middling

After a day of quite literally doing nothing, I have had an almost entirely sleepless night culminating in mild fever, thumping headache and a vague feeling of nausea. Actually, not so much vague as definite.
I'm middlingly unwell.

Middlingly unwell is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs, because I'm not ill enough to doze fitfully in my bed, drinking hot Marmite and watching daytime TV (a small mercy), yet not well enough to actually do anything.

Then the dog joined in. After an extended bout of yelping, he delivered evidence of an upset stomach, which of course, I had to go and clear up.

So now we're in synch. He lies limpidly on the floor, whilst I half-heartedly wash-up. Then I feel ill again and sit down, but sitting down puts me at eye-level with some dust, so I get out the lambswool duster, which re-animates the dog, who thinks of this as a yearned-for toy that he may not have, and barks and leaps at it, making the dusting even more trying. Then we both collapse for a while.

And of course, when you're ill, whatever you have in your medicine cabinet is insufficient, thus rendering it imperative to drive to Shoppers' Drug Mart, where you end up in the line behind the woman who speaks no English yet wishes to interrogate the long-suffering assistant about the points on her loyalty card. Behind me, two men shuffle and mutter. I try to will her to move on, but now she must make another fuss about bags.

Back on the road, things are even more mental. Getting out of the car park is no joke at any time of the day or night, but there appears to be someone weaving back and forth across the lanes and coming towards me. Will the driver mount the curb and plough into me I wonder, but she swerves away, narrowly missing a pedestrian.

Almost home, when, with no warning whatsoever, a car does a complete 180 in front of me. The driver grins at me in what I can only assume is some kind of soppy and useless apology. I give him my grim reaper stare, which is all I can currently manage, but this merely causes him to grin more stupidly.

On second thoughts, I must be more than middlingly ill, there's chocolate in the cupboard and I don't fancy it.