Harsh

My birthday cake at work. Smart colleagues!

Damn. It is my very last day of being in my 40s and I feel like hell.

The week was long and hard with poor sleep and I have been surrounded by people with bugs.
Still I seemed to be resisting getting anything myself. On Friday at work I was very tired but the day was brightened by my lovely colleagues who had made me a rice-cake cake. One of them, Colin, had written me a song, and sang it to me. It was a song about my lunches. They also gave me a £50 note for my 50th birthday. I won't see them tomorrow so they decided to celebrate early.
Come 6pm I thought I had made it, cycling my ass down the leafy cycle path in the dark and the rain. A sizeable week done and dusted.

On Saturday it looked okay outside but the weather forecast suggested it was going to be cold and blowy. Indeed it was. P and me went for a slightly longer run - running from Gullane to Yellowcraigs and then back along to Gullane along the beach. I was stiff and sore to start with but thought I would ease off as I ran. I never really did, but I enjoyed being out anyway. The wind was bitter but we'd come layered up. The low light was catching the spume off the sea and it was atmospheric.

Arriving home I was feeling shaky. The flat next door is between rents and so somebody has been giving it a lick of paint. A lick of bargain basement toxic gloss by the smell of things. Our flat seems to be fairly porous given how our mouse ranges around - it disappears for months and then pitches up one day as if it had never been away. The flat was stinking of paint when we got in, anyway and we had to commit the ecologic crime of having the heater on and the window open at the same time. The back of my nose burned but I thought it was just the vile paint and we enjoyed a night of watching total caca on the telly. We watched the second half of 'Fright Night' which we'd taped and I had never been able to bring myself to watch. Peter was laughing at me as I shouted advice at the telly. How can they be so stupid? DON'T GO INTO THE HOUSE IN THE DARK!!! Some of the plot was a bit problematic. The vampire had a minder guy who could be out in the sunlight during the day. Not a vampire then. But then a volley of bullets didn't kill him and his reaction to a stake through the heart was to release several litres of green gloop, and then kind of disintegrate into his constituent parts. What was he? "It's only a film" was Peter's response to my enquiries about this. Hmmm.

Then we watched some of a film called The Guest which degenerated from being a bit intriguing to phantasy bullshit where a bullet-proof mystery psychopath takes on the CIA, who are armed to the teeth, and somehow picks up only a few minor wounds and evades capture. He didn't have a super-power so I think it was just because he was quite handsome.

We didn't bother watching the end. I went off to bed, and Peter stayed up to watch part of a third film.

I had hoped that I would be right as rain again today, but I'm not. All night I had a sore throat and dreams about having a sore throat. Today I went for a walk to the shops in the late afternoon to get some fresh air but I felt like I was the guy wearing the diving suit to run the London Marathon.

Supposing I survive the night, I will be ducking under the finishing arch of my 40s at 6.15am a bit the worse for wear. It's not been an easy year. Maybe 50 will be better.