Lying low

Another day of grogginess and coughing, thankfully without a high temperature. It may sound odd, but I knew I'd turned a corner after a huge bout of diarrhea this morning. It sometimes happens to me near the end of a course of antibiotics. There's no doubt that they can play havoc with the intestinal tract The common cold may be a virus, but some of the nasty bugs that accompany it dwell in the gut, and the horribly runny nose is the body's front line effort to chase them out of the body, I believe. By the evening my nose stopped running, coughing was reduced to getting rid of legacy gunk. It'll still take several days more to return to normal however.

Use of antibiotics tends to disrupt the gut anyway. That's no reason to try them as a cold cure. It was just a lucky coincidence I was taking them. In my days as Guild Chaplain in Birmingham, I recall hearing a microbiology lecturer say that any time he felt a cold was starting, he'd take a dose of something which would quickly result in bowel emptying, as he'd learned the cold would not then develop further. I guess it's a matter of giving the immune system a helping hand.

I took a shorter than usual walk in the park after lunch, and over on the tennis court fence noticed a grey wagtail. It was the same colour as the court surface when it flew down and away from me, not as easy to spot as a pied or yellow wagtail would be, and I've seen both kinds around here. 

I'm impressed to see day be day, how the park's tree management team has cleared fallen branches and trunks from the spell of high winds two weeks ago, tons of timber and branches were felled at the time and in the most urgent cases clearance work started after making the site safe within a few days, but it's been a long job to restore the grasslands to their normal tidiness. 

I learned today that Cousin Ivor's funeral is to take place on Michaelmass Day in a private ceremony at Cambridge Crem, in a chapel without video streaming available. I doubt if he'd have minded that. He always liked to be seen at his best, to make a good impression. After a few years of declining health and increasing dependency on carers robbing him of his pride, this seems appropriate, as is the assigned day. 

'May the angels lead him into Paradise....'