My body has chosen a very inopportune moment to get sick. I have less than twenty-four hours to finish writing about the epigraphs (and yes, that means I’ll stop raving about the epigraphs too…) and all I want to do is sleep and eat protein. In fact, I think my body is rebelling and demanding all the protein it missed out on all the times I couldn’t be bothered eating a well-balanced meal. I can’t bear the idea of sugar or coffee (especially coffee. Oh god! It’s come to this!) and the only things I want to eat are eggs, vegetables, rice and meat… it’s a little disturbing. I eat, I sleep. I force myself awake to write about George Eliot before my body demands yet more sleep.

But as the paper was pretty well advanced before I got sick, it’s not the end of the world. So perhaps it’s better to be sick today and not next week when I’m off to Panama. I remember travelling from Corte to Bastia, Bastia to Livorno, Livorno to Florence all in the one day after I’d spent a day on Corsica unable to keep anything down. Another day with godawful flu catching a train across Poland, getting into a town I didn’t know with no accommodation booked—apparently completely unaware that it would be impossible to find accommodation. (I still bless that taxi driver who took me to a nearby town and went into each hotel for me until he found a room I could afford. He was very kind, and obviously took my extreme budget into account when he charged me!) The point? Long days of travelling while ill are miserable.

I plan for my mystery illness to be gone by Wednesday. (I’m determined.) Then I plan to eat Mexican food.