6. Anthrax and Presidents

3/10/08

5 days to go after today - halfway at lunchtime!

For about 30 seconds this morning I thought we'd made it onto Radio 4. How strange that hearing about someone's death from a horrendous disease made me stop in excitement. (More evidence of the selfish core of my personality. This minor inconvenience masquerading in my mind as a crisis, a test of human spirit, has brought that core right to the surface.)
The story was about a man, a drum maker, who died suddenly of Anthrax. It fitted our quarantine so perfectly. But the man was in Scotland. He had caught the disease by inhaling directly from the skins he imported to make his drums. They went on to say that the spores would not travel through the air and could not be transmitted from person to person. Sealing off an entire village would be a little unreasonable for Anthrax then.
You've got to ask though - why didn't our story make it through? ...Maybe to stop people flocking to see the 21st Century Eyam and carrying the infection away with them across Britain? Yes, that sounds plausible, but then they wouldn't put it on local radio either would they?

It's good to listen to the radio. Helps to keep things in perspective. There's a world out there and it's moving apace. Tomorrow is the American Presidential Election. Finally - they really eek it out over there! B. was following it avidly on the net but has gone a bit cold now he can only listen to the updates. A visual learner to my auditory? Tomorrow we'll sit quietly round the radio awaiting the good people of the US's decision. Then we'll discuss it together, just the two of us, both with the same opinion. The course of the world's history will be reset while we sit waiting to rejoin it.

Yesterday I moped. Lack of purpose, frustration, nothing to write about. Pathetic, but strangely familiar. A rewind to the adolescent years I suppose. That anthrax story really picked me up.

Also yesterday we ran out of milk and bread. Yesterday that was a disaster; today I made scones. I think I'd even have made bread if I'd had some yeast.
Milk's a problem, but only for 5 days. Cereals I can do without. I've cracked into that coffee whitener though. Imagine - I could have made hundreds for that on Ebay, but my desire for white tea was too strong.

Today we opened the curtains. Not gingerly. And everything out there is fine. The autumn leaves are covering the road (I never realised how the traffic kept them cleared) and the field opposite is teeming with rabbits. Other than that, no change. Just bright autumn sunshine coaxing us out.