A THREE-RUCKSACK DAY

I don't feel much like writing at the moment. I'm not sure why. If I push myself, maybe I can make something of it.

I'm ill - but it's an illness that's lost somewhere between 'too trivial to mention' and 'too serious not to go on about it'. I feel weak and I have a sniffly cold that feels like it started in my bones.

I think it might be because yesterday was a three-rucksack day.

I got home late and had to park halfway down the street. Through the lamplight I walked, my church rucksack on my back, my work rucksack on my front and my gym rucksack carefully balanced on top of the front one. Three rucksacks. I had my keys jangling in my left my coat pocket. In my right hand I carried a WeightWatchers lasagne and a tin of chilli-con-carne.

This is the essence of a three-rucksack day, a day so packed, so ludicrously busy with stuff that all the bits of it collide at the end of it, when you waddle home and the neighbours twitch at you through their curtains.

I just emptied a Lemsip Max cold and flu capsule into a cup of hot chocolate. It fizzed like acid. You're probably not supposed to take the capsules apart, are you? They're probably supposed to be for slow release.

That's what I need - slow release, instead of letting it all out at once. I'm not... unhappy... by the way; I'm doing okay today, it's just tiredness and fed-up-ness speaking - especially yesterday, especially on a three-rucksack day.

I guess that's why I don't feel much like writing. Who would want to expose their weaknessess or (almost) deliberately moan and complain all the time? Who would want to come across like that? In a quest for transparency, it seems I'm still strangely protective about my image.

But obviously not enough not to write anything at all.

I microwaved the lasagne and ate it with a fork, my socked feet warming on the radiator. I felt like Scrooge in 'A Christmas Carol' - only slightly less cheery.

It's a one-rucksack day today - a big, chunky work laptop bag. And it's chilli for tea.

I'll be alright.