the perils of travel

I should never have said to my friend - "...and I haven't had a cold since last spring", because such hubris is invariably punished.
Coming back from a blossomy Belfast and another weeks' reading of C18th letters, I could detect the traces of oncoming illness. Nevertheless, I went on to attend day 2 of a conference and the following day, hung around a cold and gusty car park, opposite a grey and uninviting sea, on a fund-raising car boot sale morning.

This morning I have a throat like a cheese grater and I have to hope it just a regular cold and not the swine-bird flu. Over the last three days, I've been in two cities and two more towns, on trains, buses and cars, in public record offices and auditoriums; unless I had made an aeroplane journey, I could hardly have spread myself further around.