... Bed..?????????

Meanwhile, sometime in the past, three days remain to Christmas...

Having started work unexpectedly early I managed to finish in a similar fashion (for a change), but as I travelled home I felt my chest tighten and as a result the depth and my taste perception of each breath had altered...  and I knew I had a cold coming on.  As usual my timing rocked!  So when I arrived home I did what I could to prepare for an early night to try and sweat it out and be able to crack on and earn a few more pennies before JC's birthday.

So after a few hours of planning, prepping and plotting for my own impending journey I turned in and tried to get my sweat on.  With no luck.  I think I got about an hour's sleep - and yes, I got some sweat on but unfortunately it was all the virus' doing, not mine!  And with the full symptoms of what turned out to be Flu raging through my body for the first time in several years, I had to go to work.  Which was nice.  I did manage to finish in good time AND got away after letting the boss know I wouldn't be in for Christmas Eve, and I also managed to grab a couple of important bits and bobs on the route home, so it wasn't a totally horrific day on all fronts, just the ones that involved my joints, organs, glands and skin in any way shape or form...

Christmas Eve.  Still feeling like Death warmed up, chewed a bit then spat on the floor, but not quite as bad as the previous day, I figured I was getting better, so set about the standard things like walking the dog, eating and prepping bits and bobs for the next few days use.  And seeing as it was Christmas eve after all, I thought about doing a bit of wrapping...

I slept like a baby.  Literally, in my cool as f*** sleeping bag.  I woke around 8am and felt better than I had fr the last couple of days - a little bit of a cough but I'd managed to stave it off and not succumb.  My thoughts were becoming ever focussed on Boxing Day morning but I had to get through the day ahead of me first.  Breakfast, Lunch, go to sisters' house for a bit of present giving and then Dinner.  I can;t complain because I didn't cook it or pay for it, but I'm used to eating pretty fresh food and don't go for processed meats for starters.  So Christmas dinner didn't go down as well as it may but I'm thankful for what was put in front of me (although I'd quite like to do it again, on my terms so to speak... ).  Managed to speak to my brother on the phone from NJ, lots of support coming from that direction, and others too :0)

The meal done, the evening came and I got on with finishing off bits of packing for the following day.  Christmas day ended on an unexpected high and I went to bed feeling pretty good all things considered.  Yes I was still feeling a bit chesty but I wasn't sneezing, coughing or otherwise distressed at all.


Boxing Day.  6am.  The alarm can go and do something unpleasant to itself for an hour, can't it..?  It did, and so I dragged myself out of bed, and as I did I heard the bathroom door lock.  Great timing, good start to the day...  So - got dressed, finished doing my packing of little things, got a cuppa in me and then managed to get into the bathroom, only to find that all was not as it should be.  My intestines had decided that they weren't going to play ball today, a state that didn't alter for the next 14 hours much to my discomfort - lucky I was going for a walk and not a drive!  Got my bum downstairs and found 2 Bacon Rolls waiting for me but I wasn't really hungry.  I was preoccupied with getting on the road, getting the first few miles down and through the borders before sunrise tomorrow.  I stepped out of the back door after some amount of faffing about trying to get my rucksack on and chest pack clipped onto that.  Wouldn't be the last time it cost me time instead of the convenience I'd had planned for it.  Went round the front and collected my Sticks from behind the front door.  Pulled them out to the right length, clipped them into place and then waited.  To my surprise Ma & Pa had decoded to walk down the road a while with me and brought Dexy Dog too,  I could've cried, and nearly did.  Yes I was only going for a few days (about 2 weeks including getting my arse back) but I was so going to miss that gnarly little barker with every ounce of my bleeding heart.  If I haven't told you yet - he's my lovechild from a previous relationship and probably saved my life as well as sanity.  We walked about 800yds down the road together - Ma taking photos and me trying to do the same as we went, until we parted, hopefully not for too long.

Goodbyes said I was on my own from here on in.  Another 800 yds to the road that led to Whitehill.  I turned the corner and headed up the hill.  Another right and through the village, then the hill proper loomed in front of me.  This was to be my first challenge.  I watched the Kriss Akkabusi Challenge guys working their nuts off trying to get up this hill on racing bikes in the summer and didn't fancy it much on foot.  Using the sticks it wasn't as hard as it could have been, but having never actually used them before it wasn't long before I started to sweat up a storm on my ascent!  After getting onto the flat I started to adjust my jacket zips, rucksack lines, chestpack...  A couple of miles down the road it started to get right on my tits, so I dropped it down a few inches off of them, which helped me get to my zips n'bits so I could cool down.  I walked down the other side of the hill, through Edgehead and into Ford.  Just before I got into Ford the temperature dropped around me as the mist thickened into freezing fog.  A Mercedes passed me and 100 yds down the road I spotted a large bird in the road under the cover of the trees.  It was a Buzzard - might even have been one of the ones I'd been watching all summer, from egg to chick to soaring predator.  One of this cold, snowy winters' winners thus far, but now it lay on the ground in front of me, its' neck broken and twisted through 180 degrees as it took its' final breaths.  We shared a look and it passed before my eyes.  I said a few words in my heart before I moved off.

I climbed out of the fog and onto the A68 at Pathead.  The paths were frozen solid with lumps of icy snow so I had to stick to the road as far as I could.  It took a while but in spite of the traffic I got through the town and into the back of beyond...  Still hot, sweating like I hadn't done in a long time but not managing to find a balance, and my breathing was starting to get excessively heavy.  Was it the sticks or me..?  Didn't have time to work that one out.  I took a couple of photos after leaving the town, which were the last I was to take.  The miles lay on front of me and my job was pretty simple.  Eat them and keep them coming - morning, noon and night.  So I had a few with a Bacon Roll, chased down by some good Scottish Water.  The water did cool me down a little but not enough, and the Rucksack was starting to bite into my shoulders.  First few miles were always going to be nasty, my body needed to become accustomed to the task and used to being treated like an Indian's Donkey.  The unforgiving reality of blisters had just started to nip me after about 10 miles, but it didn't take that long for the pain to build and pass.  Not like the pain in my shoulders from the Rucksack. Perhaps in spite of the adjustments I was making to the straps, it seemed to bite deeper and deeper into my left trapezius, taking the lump of meat and turning it into painful solid stone right under my skin.

As I walked I kept checking the roadsigns.  Despite what had seemed to be hours and hours I'd still only walked 2 miles further towards Jedburgh each time I checked.  Really..???  That can't be true I thought, I've walked bleeding MILES!  Turns out that there are a few signs that seem to show the road distance to Jedburgh as the same despite the fact that you'll have walked/driven about 10 miles between them.  Stupid signs.  Anyways... I was making some distance.  I walked up Soutra - last time I'd been here the car I was in had died and I sat on the side of the hill watching traffic for a couple of hours while I waited for the RAC man to come.  Which was actually nice :0)  And I got to walk down the other side...

The miles from here were long and seemed to take ages.  It was head down, deal with the heat, remember to drink your water.  I wasn't listening to any music just in case something large and potentially life ending drove around the corner.  And it was like this forever.  I passed through a couple of villages and towns, giving them as much thought as they gave me.  I passed the windmills and sheep, giving them as much thought as they gave me.  Baaaaah!  I almost passed out.  Twice.  This didn't go unnoticed and not by the damned sheep either.  Luckily.  It was the pigs.  Or rather, and to be much nicer about it, it was one of the Police officers who'd taken an interest in my little jaunt.  Having walked a distance roughly equivalent to two Marathons, 'Steve'; I'll call him Steve as I didn't catch his name; 'Steve',   asked me what the heck I thought I was up to.  I explained my mission, my reasons and my hopes for the next few days.  He explained that if I didn't voluntarily stop, he'd arrest me for my own good and drag me to the hospital.  And he'd rather not do the paperwork.  He went on to explain that he'd been a Paramedic before he was a copper and seen the signs enough times to know that if I didn't stop he, or one of his colleagues, would be be chipping me out of a block of ice and trying to explain to my parents why they hadn't done anything about me when he saw me in obvious trouble.

And he was right to do what he did.over the next couple of hours my body temperature plummeted, I couldn't feel my left hand at all and I was so cold to my core that it took a hot bath and several hours before I could thermoregulate without serious assistance.  Worse still my lungs were filling with a clear/pinkish fluid pretty quickly, which had to be dealt with before anything else...  Turned out that my 'Cold' was in fact 'Flu', of a piggy variety and hadn't gone away at all.  My efforts had raised my body temperature sufficiently for it to take a hold of me and do what it does best.  Give me Viral Pneumonia.  Luckily it was caught before it could do any large scale damage and very luckily I'm not one of the 39 flu death statistics to date this winter.

Happy Boxing Day :0)