Palinka

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1linka

A rather lovely Hungarian of my acquaintance gave me a shot of this tonight  claiming that it had medicinal properties. I was in need of it today as I was like a snot factory working at full pelt and continued to suffer with fatigue and a sore throat. Really not enjoying this week at all.

The psychology of being ill is fascinating. I read an article today that your belief system is of fundamental importance to how you cope with illness. If your mental scaffolding is strong you will wobble but you won't fall.

Greater wisdom came from reading Margaret Attwood's Burning Questions which is a wonderful book of essays from the last two decades. She writes fluidly and easily and is a polymath with genuine humility and has been my saviour this week. "There's always hope" she says at one point, suggesting that hope, like covid, is infectious. "Hope is built-in. It's also catching: where there is hope there will be more hope, because with hope, people make an effort. And an effort is what, in the future, we will all have to make". 

So I hope I will feel better and I have got off my butt on several occasions today to do things because you have to get the balance right beween self-care and giving in. Which is also my thinking about ageing, which I think a lot about at the moment. Looking after yourself and pushing yourself in the right proportions is a good rule for life, never more so than when you are ill or getting older.

My last big thing I have been thinking about today (and you do think a lot when you are ill - or I do anyway) is the toxicity of having too much choice. This was bought on by making the mistake of what we once called channel hopping but is now presumably called "streaming surfing" - going through the fantastic array of programmes with big budgets that seem to come at us month after month. You get the same thing with books. They fly off the shelves endlessly at us, making us feel inadequate for not reading them. Book reviewers seem like superheroic beings not just for reading them but writing about them (for clarification I am not a literary superhero just because I have written here about Margaret Attwood). 

My one little thing I have thought a lot about today is money. Like most other people I watch the cost of stuff with horror and am constantly thinking about ways of economising without becoming miserable. Balance again. I shall stop buying books and go to the library. I have become a prowler in my own home, turning off lights and checking thermostats. I use one sheet of kitchen paper where before I used three. The dishwasher seems to perform more than adequately with half as much gel as I used to put in. Tea leaves can be used twice. And so it goes on.

Yes there is hope but you have to work at it. And the odd shot of Palinka (home made by the way) is good for lifting the spirits - literally ...