Under the weather

Can a plant be miserable? I'm not sure, but this oxalis kind of reflects my mood just now.

"You miserable git," wife Gill said to me today with feeling. Unkind, but she had a point. It had been a miserable day. Firstly it was damp and raining this morning and it's damp and raining this evening.

I was hacked off this morning to find my accommodation still isn't sorted out for Weymouth where I'm supposed to be covering the Olympic sailing as a journalist. They had put me in Mrs Miggins' guest house on the seafront - no parking, no internet and live music downstairs every night. Whoopee!

Apparently this is top level international journalism these days. It wasn't always thus. Gone are the days when we stayed in luxury. "They expect you to work hard but they look after you well," I was told by my department head when I joined the newspaper in 1987. They did too.

I assure you I'm not a prima donna. I don't need a little triangle on the end of my lavatory paper. But, well, frankly, I expected something with facilities I need and, most of all, some peace at night. Part of the problem is that local hotels think they can charge the earth as the world comes to Weymouth.

Budgets control decisions these days. It's the same in all organisations and helps to explain why I no longer work for one. I expect it will all be sorted out.... or it won't.

To cap it all I've come down with a bug that's making me doubly miserable, plus I had to give someone some bad news this morning that had to be handled as delicately as I feel just now. It was all I could muster to get out and blip this oxalis which has dainty red flowers in bright sunshine. I can see a bud here but will it ever open? Forgive the drooping leaves, but I haven't the energy for anything better.