Having arrived back in England after a  previous visit to Seychelles feeling like a worn out husk, the cumulative effect of too many disturbed nights, I thought I would rent an apartment this time to ensure adequate sleep. However, this didn’t work out according to plan:

A thief in the night

The upshot was, by the time I was due to return home, my nervous state was again in a parlous state; and after an entirely sleep free journey to London, via Abu Dhabi, I found myself face to face with an even scratchier version of my inner husk than I remembered previously.

By the second evening back, having cut my hair, cut the lawn, made bread and been shopping, something snapped and I succumbed to a bout of dengue fever.

For a week, I dozed, day and night, in a morass of discomfort. No matter what I did, I couldn’t relax. Trying to describe what I was experiencing, it seems absurd, but I became caught up in a frantic chase for comfort I had no means of satisfying.

Day or night, I would shift my body into a position of ease; but no sooner had I settled down than another, alternative position would offer itself, which I felt compelled to take. After manourvering myself into this new position, I would again settle down, only for another option to materialise, as if from nowhere – which, again, I found I had no choice but to accept. This shifting from one position to another went on interminably, without let up. I became exhausted and haunted by it.

The second week, the fever eased, leaving an itchy rash in its wake. The search for comfort continued … but this time, the desire to scratch a different itch to the one I had just indulged added itself to the continued need to seek out a new position of comfort and ease, leaving me slowly stewing in the Tagine of Idiocy that my brain seemed to have become reduced to.