Crash

I don't know if anyone was actually expecting an update from me yesterday - well, I was expecting one from myself, and people were expecting a mash-slash challenge, and for that I am truly sorry. The explanation for my relative absence is actually quite simple. I'm dead.

You know what I mean. Becca spent the whole of yesterday rhapsodising about going home, because she was struggling under the onset of a lovely September cold, and while I was in close proximity to a whole lot of people coughing and clutching their heads, I thought I'd be fine. I wasn't.

I haven't crashed like that for a long time. To make things worse, my family had dragged me out to dinner with a family friend, and I was just... gone. Half-dead. I had a headache, sore throat and disintegrating metatarsals. I still have all those things, but I'm not falling asleep any more. I've never been happier to get to bed.

I suppose I ought to be feeling sorry for myself at the moment, but I actually feel quite comfortable. It's a lovely morning, my parents and grandmother have gone out, and I even got a postcard - it's from cucharita when she was in Shetland. I have some work to do ("Identify the main features of Thatcher's government") but not much, and I can crawl back to bed if and when I feel like, so life is good on those fronts.

There is even stuff to eat in the fridge.

La Cage Aux Folles, the Fics From Hell and yes, I may be delirious, how did you guess?

Yes, I'm ill. Horribly so. I've drunk way too much coffee, said too many patently stupid things, found myself longing to go to bed at three o'clock in the afternoon and written incessantly. All classic signs. With me, anyway. I always find the first sign of exhaustion/general ickiness is a sudden dramatic loss of the little widget inside my head that stops me from saying absolutely everything that's on my mind. Which is where the "patently stupid things" bit comes in. I think there comes a point where you know you're a little bit more grown-up than you thought you were, and that is when your parents know you're drowning in viral toxins and saltwater, but they still go out. And they did. Go out, that is. They've gone somewhere to a dinner party - one of Pedar's colleagues, I think - and they didn't take Dadi. I asked why, and Pedar looked extremely uncomfortable. I asked my mother, who told me with relish that the family who are hosting are a Muslim family, and life would be difficult if they took my grandmother.

So, yes. It's her and me, but mostly me. I can't find things to talk to her about, so I have to lurk in my room like I did over the summer. I later found out from my mother that it has proved impossible to convince Dadi that I write for pleasure. She persists on believing all the hours I spend holed up with computer or pen are just because I am very, very studious. That's nothing much to do with tonight. I was in my room and writing through the blur in my head. Said blur is all the viruses setting up camp in my meninges or wherever, but they have the same effect on me as extreme tiredness does - they make me write.

I wrote. I wrote a lot. I finished off Fic From Hell #4. For clarification's sake:

Fic From Hell #1 - untitled, 12,000 words at present but feasibly novel-length, hasn't been touched for a fortnight.

Fic From Hell #2 - more or less complete, 8000 words, provisionally titled "Hunter's Moon", is currently in care of beta, language_idling.

Fic From Hell #3 - will most likely be called "Paragons", features too many original characters, including one named Colleen Cheetham, is 12,000 words, will probably finish off at about 15,000. Haven't done anything to it for three days now.

Fic From Hell #4 - sort of called "Special Needs", but subject to change, 5500 words and now complete.

Yes, Fic From Hell #4 - I shamelessly took advantage of hathy_col's boredom, and she gave it the world's quickest beta. I was very impressed. Anyway, it is complete, needs a bit more scribbling before I'm quite happy, but it's one of those fics that has really metamorphosed. What's the word that means pre-slash, but doesn't? Pre-het doesn't sound right... yes, a het pairing. A cross-gen het pairing. Makes me feel icky but it's so right. Call it a guilty pleasure.

Argh... my head hurts. I can't swallow. My feet and ankles gave way a long time ago and I can hardly walk. This is just not good.

I'm going to watch The Birdcage, the remake of La Cage Aux Folles. Channel Four at ten fifteen, if anyone wants to know. I've seen it before but I really love it, and it's time now, so au revoir.

I'm all coughed out. I need a hug.