Dropsy drops in for Semolina and whotnot

I have swollen glands and a sore throat. My doctor is calling it glandular fever. I am calling it dropsy. I have no idea what dropsy. Its one of those old illnesses that fell out of favour like pox. Illness like manners are so faddish. No one seems to suffer from dropsy anymore so I felt as I was going to be ill and moping about doing nothing useful I should jolly well roll my sleeves up and do my bit for tradition. Having a cause is good for ones health and mind, even if it is a rather ironic cause of sorts.

As a result of my dropsy I am unable to care for myself in the normal fashion of going to the cafe up the road for a fortifying freshly squeezed juice and a ruinously strong late. Nor am I meeting friends to peck at morsals and sip at cocktails. Instead dropsy has driven me to eating semolina. I found it in the cupboard of the South African chap I'm renting rooms from in Sydney. It which sounds like something that grows on old eggs and hens but is actually a sort of nursery food. Just the thing when dropsy's got the better of you. I boil milk, add a thin stream of semolina powder and take the pot off the heat. After transporting the contents of the pot to a bowl, I repair to bed with a suger pot where I eat it with a runsible spoon. This carry on has lasted three days.Then I ran out of pots, spoons and bowls. Today I listlessly looked at the contents of the sink, poked them hopefully but alas I didn't have the courage to do what needed to be done. Instead I went to bed with an improving book - The Secret History by Donna Tartlette.

Housework is largely a fools errand according to Quentin Crisp and others who have attempted a life of hoopla. For some I fear it is merely a task faute de mieux. For me it is a terribly exhausting and life changing terror. I classify it as taxing as driving a car or swimming neither of which I have ever had the courage to attempt.

Nancy Mitford as ever summed it up beautifully when she wrote:

"I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened."

This is why I have left my dishes to soak until someone made of sterner stouter stuff comes to visit. Dropsy or no dropsy I can hardly tackle those pots and just go on living as if nothing remarkable had happened. I just don't have that sort of resilience.