I have a cold and Hubby's has manflu! in The View from the Terrace

One of the good things about being a certain age is that when you are suffering from a bad cold you can curl up in bed for an hour or two in the daytime without feeling guilty. After all, I need to look after myself at my age, don’t I? So for the past 3 days I have been returning to my nice warm bed with my morning coffee and reading Winston Graham’s autobiography which I found in a charity shop a little while ago. Winston is the author of the Poldark books which I love and have read several times. We have the second television adaption running at the moment in the UK. The first was in the mid 70s which was when I discovered Poldark and later Winston’s other books. It’s really interesting to read his autobiography which is full of amusing anecdotes about well known people and also stories about where he found the inspiration for many of his characters. He lived in Perranporth in Cornwall for 34 years and we visited there last year so I can picture the places he talks about.

Hubby, of course, who gave me the cold was much more ill than I was, he had manflu and has been sitting in the living room in front of the TV looking very sorry for himself with a box of tissues at hand and the remains of hot lemon drinks on the coffee table. Hubby always makes a big fuss when he is ill because he can’t just let things be and make the best of them like I try to. He keeps moaning about all of the things he can’t do whereas I look for the things I can. I have been trying to find time to mend the living room curtains for a while. They had reached the point where they only pulled with difficulty and when I inspected them a few weeks ago I found that they were really dirty at the top and the rail was covered with cobwebs so I got them down, hoovered up the cobwebs and washed the rails and hooks and the curtains only to realise that the were also coming away from the strip that they hang from in several places and the hem had come down on two of them. I had known about the hem, of course, but had tried to tell myself it didn’t really show. They are all mended now and back up. It was the one thing I found I could concentrate on and didn’t take much energy.