Yesterday….

…was not a good day for me. B has put his back out, very seriously; for the past few days, he’s been barely able to walk. So I’ve been rushing around doing all the stuff that he usually does – cooking, heavy housework, carrying coalbuckets – as well as trying to get on with my own work on the computer.
Yesterday morning, I woke up with a tachycardia attack. I’ve been having these for close on thirty years and, apart from knowing that they’re linked to tiredness and stress and usually come on when I’m resting, I’ve never been able to predict when one will hit. It’s like having an attack of hiccups, except that the ‘hicupping’ is going on in the heart muscles instead of in the diaphragm. The result is that my heart bangs along at twice normal speed, pumping along my circulation far too fast; I get dizzy and light-headed.
Nine times out of ten, I can end an attack within minutes by relaxing and holding my breath or breathing into a paper bag (something to do with raising the carbon dioxide level of the blood, apprently). But, yesterday was one of the one times out of ten. I just had to ride it out until it finished by itself.
All my doctors have reassured me that it’s not doing any lasting harm, but it’s hard not to get worried. I got up out of bed (didn’t want to wake B when the pain from his back had given him so little sleep), went downstairs, lay on the sofa, went through my relaxation and calming routine, held my breath, breathed into my paper bag, relaxed again, tried not to imagine my heart bursting…
After an hour, I admitted defeat. It was time to wake B anyway, so I came back up to bed and crawled in beside him, told him what was happening.
And it suddenly stopped. “Didn’t you always know I could work magic?” said B.

But it left me feeling pretty ill. The tachycardia didn’t use to leave me with any after-effects. But that was back in the days when I was healthy. Nowadays, I’m left feeling weak, floppy and breathless for most of the day.

So there the two of us were – him crippled by his back, me with hardly any energy. It wouldn’t have mattered too much, but one of us needed to get to a shop sometime that day – we’d run out of bacon and milk. The village shop is less than half a mile away, but I didn’t think I’d manage to walk even that distance; B couldn’t even walk to the car. When I still wasn’t feeling any better by lunchtime, I went next door to John and Pauline, asked them if they were going out at all. As it happened, John had to pop to the shop for a couple of things as well, so he offered me a lift in his car.
Getting to the village, we found that the shop was unexpectedly shut. “It’s Marie’s day off and the first sunny day of spring” Said John, “”Bet he’s out on the golf course.” So we drove on to the next village. which boasts two shops. One of them was shut for lunch; the other was open. This shop is a bit of an oddity – an upmarket little delicattessen-type place that would look perfectly at home in Covent Garden or Hampstead, plonked as if by mistake into the middle of a small Scottish village. But it looked like it would have what we wanted.
The delightfully fey young man behind the counter was overjoyed that he could sell me a copy of the Guardian, pulling it out from beneath a pile of Scottish Records and Scottish Mirrors and Scottish Suns; he was instantly downcast when I asked for bacon. The shop had no bacon – they were awaiting a delivery. Oh dear, B would have nothing for his breakfast on the morrow. But – wait! “Sausages!” he cried, his face lighting up with inspiration. “How about sausages?” I agreed that sausages could and would do very well do for my beloved’s breakfast, and the young man delved deep into the cool cabinet. I was expecting him to produce a packet of Walls or somesuch; instead, he emerged clutching something shrink-wrapped in gold foil.
“Lamb sausages! Organic lamb, locally produced, flavoured with rosemary and garlic. They’re delicious! Do try them!” He held them out to me, beaming like sunshine.
I blanched at the price, but could not bring myself to cast this wonderful young thing back into despair by refusing. Instead, I bought the sausages and went away knowing that I had made somebody terribly, terribly happy. And that’s about the best anyone can do.

B had a couple of the sausages this morning. He said they were tasteless rubbish, and not to buy them again.