Ater two weeks, I’m begin­ning to feel human again after a bout of the Death Virus/‘flu/something really quite nasty. It feels like the whole of Octo­ber so far has been spent in a fog of ill­ness, but apart from tired­ness and a marked inab­il­ity to breathe (I’m hor­ribly asth­matic, it turns out. Who knew? Oh, every­one? And I would feel bet­ter if I just took my indus­trial strength inhalers some­times? Oh. Well. I’ll think about it.), the fog is start­ing to lift. I’ve even done things today that don’t involve star­ing into middle dis­tance and for­get­ting what I’m doing, although admit­tedly that was along­side star­ing into space and for­get­ting what I’m doing.

The old pet­rol pump in the photo is just around the corner from the flat, but as it’s on a route we don’t take very often I man­aged to not notice it for almost three months. It’s sur­pris­ing how quickly you stop noti­cing things, even in new places, when you for­get to look and start tak­ing the things around you for granted.