Wednesday 22 February 2017

Someone to watch over you

Doris is on her way over. I wish I could welcome her from the cosy interior of a well-stocked Scottish bothie on a remote piece of high coastland, because she is bringing snow to them up there - well, blizzards apparently. She produces gusts of 80 mph I am told. That's what I call windy.

It occurred to me yesterday that I have a cold which has lasted all Winter. This has never happened to me before. It has gone on for four months now and because I know many people who have the same cold, I cannot decide if it is due to a particularly vicious microbe or the possibility that everyone's immune systems have been weakened by the appalling series of world events, culminating in the election of you-know-who. If the latter, then the cold may last for four years.

I had pneumonia when I was a child. It ceased to be life-threatening after a dose of anti-biotics delivered via a large needle into my arse. It came with a fever which lasted for one long night, during which I had many hallucinations and, when I was awake, produced bright, white rings of light behind my eyeballs when I coughed, and I coughed a lot.

Lawrie Lee's description of a childhood fever is the best I have ever read. In it, he describes faces appearing in the stained wallpaper of his little Slad bedroom as looking like 'gods gone mouldy'. Brilliant. I can see them now.

I had an experience during that long night which I will never, ever forget, and will never be persuaded that it was an hallucination.

By the side of my bed there was a chair which could be used for putting clothes on etc. At the height of my fever I awoke to see an old lady sitting on it, looking down on me and smiling. I did not recognise her, and it was only later that I thought of her as giving off light - she was glowing in the dark it seemed.

Ghosts are always depicted as glowing, but this is because your brain tells you that you are unable to see things in the dark, so you remember them as glowing. In fact, you just see things as if in normal light.

When I saw the old lady, I remember thinking that everything would be alright with her watching over me, and I slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep. In the morning, my fever had gone and I was well on the way to recovery.

It was my mother who suggested that the lady was my guardian angel.

16 comments:

  1. I wonder what was her name. They do have names you know, and if we know them, we remember them. Unlike this silly storm naming business.

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    1. Here in the UK it is popular to have a Native American as your spirit guide. Well it used to be anyway. They always have to be a chief or shaman though - no ordinary brave will do.

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  2. I have a close friend that says she has had three distinct colds in a row. Guess it is going around the world. I have seen two 'guardian angels.' One, a young man in a fishing hat with ties on it, about late teenaged and blue eyes that were lit up like flashlights. He told me my husband was sick and he was, with cancer. The other a young woman who told me to follow the crystal line or crystalline. I never figured that one out, though I tried. Get well and weather the storm inside. Wish I could send you my limoncello. It will cure anything.

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    1. We have limoncello. I'll give myself s headache instead. How/ where did you see yours?

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  3. I am gladdened that you do not mock experiences that are perhaps out of the normal run of things.

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    1. I never have. Some say I am stupid and fanciful, but their lives are more boring than mine.

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    2. He saves that for the run of the mill things Libby.

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  4. Get well soon Tom ...... I would love to see my guardian angel but they don't seem to want to show themselves to me ! I don't think that Doris is going to reach the South East. XXXX

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    1. Guardian angels might be worried to expose themselves to you, but I am sure you have one hovering around. Hark at me, sounding like an expert.

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  5. The common cold is a bugger. I'm at the late stage of mine (offered by my grandsons after a short visit), and now have a dry cough and painful chest. I expect it'll be another week before it goes completely.

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    1. Derek is right in his forecast of doom. The cough will go on and on.

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  6. Hopefully Cro, you haven't got the cold virus that's been sweeping the UK this winter. Most who have had it have seen their cough last for up to 4-5 weeks.

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  7. The Catholic church have saints and Italians believe saints are guardian angels; there's a long list to choose from.
    I don't pray and I haven't chosen a saint to pray to - I suppose I have no guardian angel looking over me then?
    Greetings Maria x

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    1. If the rest of us do, then so do you. Your angel might not be Catholic though.

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