Harry's Blog

Well all my promises of lots of new updates over the weekend didn’t come true. But I’ve a good excuse, it’s been rather a stressful weekend for me and rather a horrible one for my beloved L.

She’s been at Spring Harvest in Skegness since Thursday and was settling in fine, enjoying the first few days and looking forward to a week and a half chilling out and enjoying the varied events there.

On Saturday morning she phoned me to say she was getting a bit of a cold. But things went downhill from there.

By Sunday morning she was really ill, running a very high temperature and in her own words “couldn’t move.” Obviously I was really worried, what made it worse is that I could do nothing at all to help. Public transport is terrible here at the best of times, but getting to Skegness is a nightmare as it is, on Easter Sunday it’s nigh on impossible.

And no-one seemed to be helping L at that end. Her friend S went to talk to someone at Butlins guest services and they didn’t sound very helpful. Saying they didn’t have a doctor and that L should go to the local casualty. But she couldn’t move out of bed, let along walk. She was this ill at one point last year and I know how bad this can be.

I was scared and stressed. Scared for her wellbeing and stressed that I wasn’t able to help very much. I did manage to contact some very helpful folks there at Spring Harvest via the Ship of Fools website and by then Butlins had finally got its arse into gear.

L was taken by ambulance to casualty and they spent five hours trying to bring her fever down. Tonsillitis was the diagnosis, which may not sound bad to you, but L was so ill with it at one point last year I had to get a doctor out in the middle of the night.

While poor L was stuck in hospital I spent the afternoon pacing around our flat, feeling very alone and very scared. I was also feeling rather useless, because I wasn’t doing anything to help my L. My family were great though, I spoke to my aunt, sister, dad and L’s mum several times during the day.

Finally L was brought home from the hospital. Well when I say home, I mean back to Butlins, where her and friend S were put in quarantine so they didn’t infect everyone else. I’m led to believe this is par for the course there. Not that it mattered much to L, who wasn’t able to move much anyway. They were brought food and drinks by Spring organisers and Butlins, though at one point both brought a meal and neglected the cutlery.

Anyway, L is doing a lot better. She’s still rather poorly and finally I’m able to do something. My aunt C is visiting my uncle T in Gravesend this week, rather fortuitous, and has offered to drive up with me to Skegness tomorrow (Tuesday) so we can rescue L and bring her home. There’s no way she can manage the return train journey and she wasn’t due to come home until next Sunday.

I was missing L badly enough as it was, but this whole drama has been very hard. Worse for poor L because she’s the one suffering. But I’ve felt rather useless. It’s at times like this that I miss having a car. If I’d had access to one I’d have been straight up to Skegness at the first sign of this trouble. I'm so greatful to C for volunteering for tomorrow's 300+ mile round trip. And grateful too to my various clients who've been very sympathetic about me not being available for work tomorrow.

Oh well, the story thankfully is going to have a happy ending as L is sounding much better than she was and I’ll see her in the morning. She’s probably going to be stuck in bed for a week, but at least she’ll get plenty of TLC from me.