Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Day 45. Holbury. Sept 20 2001

I am now officially sick.

Looking out at the vast expanse of these two pages I wonder how I can possibly fill them and so develop a new policy that I will write only as far as I can and begin the next days entry where the last one ended. Unfortunately when I bought the journal I labeled each day so I wouldn’t forget, up to 47, so I still have to fill in a couple of pages.

Today was very much a lay at home day. What had started as a scratchy throat and a couple of sneezes soon developed into a full blown cold and I was forced, yeah it was so hard, to sit in front of the television for the entire day. Heather had made plans with Paul and Tessa and so biked off to Blackfield, leaving me alone with my sniffles. Paul had previously fixed Heather’s pannier rack with fiberglass tape but she had forgotten to bring the bolts with her at our last visit, necessitating one more trip. Paul was possibly the most excited Orman about our trip, possibly because he is an avid biker in his own right. He also seems to feel a debt of gratitude to my parents because they hosted Paul and Tessa on their honeymoon. He offered us whatever we needed to make our holiday a success! Pretty generous offer, especially because I think my parents had even more fun hosting the Ormans than they had coming over. I still remember vividly Paul and Dad disappearing one morning in Yoho National Park (I think) only to reappear as tiny dots on the side of a mountain, climbing to abandoned caves.

It is really amazing how open and generous all the Orman’s are. They have hosted us with a generosity that is boundless and they have made us feel like honourary members of their families, even allowing their children to drool, vomit and play all over us.

Heather was at Paul and Tessa’s for a very long time and learnt that my cold was probably distributed family wide at Sam’s birthday party the previous weekend. Thomas was sick as was Nick, Sam, Emily, Imogine, Paul and sort of Heather. At least the family shares everything with their guests.

Oh, I forgot to mention that yesterday was Maxine’s birthday. She was so low key about it that I keep forgetting…. Oh and I think it was Paul’s as well. They were born on the same day years apart. Heather, being the responsible and social member of our twosome gave both cards that we had brought from Canada, beautiful photo cards produced by Dad.

My television watching experience was interesting. The news of course was saturated with events in America and Afghanistan. It is most unfortunate that Bush is president in these trying times. A man with genuine vision could parley the horror that grips the world into a more powerful United Nations, a truly international criminal court system and greater global unity, but instead America concentrates on revenge that will solve nothing, perhaps kill hundreds of innocents and fragment the nations of the world even further along religious and ethnic lines.

Strange how the BBC is held as an ideal that all other news programs should strive towards, a newscaster all others look towards for that quality. Most other British news sources are absolute trash. Reading the headlines it is hard to believe they don’t spark panic everyday. “Terrorists living in our midst” announces one paper when the article describes terrorists catching a connector flight from London. And every page is filled with the minute movements of celebrities. How anyone could care that much is beyond me.

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