An Ill Blog Brings No Good

I woke up this morning and realised two things.

Firstly, it was Saturday. I always like Saturdays and I always have. It's always been the kind of day where not going to work or school is a novelty, unlike Sunday where it's completely worn off and you're just looking at the clock thinking "slow down you bastard !!!". Saturday means sleeping in, watching football, playing football, having some beers and generally basking in the warm feeling of not having anything in particular to do. When I was a kid, Saturday was the day where I'd really appreciate having lunch at home, just because it felt like a weird thing to do. Almost like I was given a day off school. A Saturday is the first time in six days where you can wake up in the morning and then go to sleep in the evening without having got out of bed. Not that I really ever have, and in practise that would stink, but it's cool to know that the option is there all the same.

The second thing I noticed this morning was that I was cold and wet, and that this was a familiar feeling. This, fortunately (or unfortunately ?) was not a flashback to the toilet training days, but the familiarity came from several times in the night where I woke up in a cold sweat, with a sore throat and a headache. This is the downside of Saturdays. Much like Christmas or your birthday, it's almost a guarantee that if you're going to get sick, you'll keep it for this particular day that you've been looking forward to for ages. My sister, has been sick for several days with the same thing and as soon as I knew this, I was sure I'd catch it on Saturday morning. QED, karma strikes again.

These two realisations led me to my first mental process of the morning. What the hell was I going to do today ? Being ill, just like being hungover, inspires many feelings in me. I'm generally lazy and apathetic towards life in general, but I'm also very easily bored and look for something to do. Without any energy at all this generally leads to me sitting on the computer for half of the day and reading a book the other half of the day, and I get bored with sitting around. I then look for something else to do and don't find anything that satisfies my low-energy-requirement quota, and then go back to the computer. Today I've made the time pass ("go quicker you bastard !!!") by chatting with anyone who would care to listen, let my mind wander around Google Earth (of which there should be compulsory ownership for everyone in my opinion), downloaded maps of Africa and drawn lines on them. This is what I'm plotting with M. Going to Africa, that is, not drawing lines on maps. In the last couple of minutes I've entertained myself by trying to keep my sister's dog out of my bowl of tortellini.

Maps though, are they cool or what ?? I've never seen such an inspiring red line as the one that goes between Nkongogonogorogo and Mbolomboloudougouni in Congo or Cameroon (or wherever else these two fictional villages may be representing are) which is, may be, isn't, or never was a road. What it represents is a dream, a possibility that one day I may leave Nkongogonogorogo, looking out for monkeys and hippos, getting out to walk when those potholes get too damn big, and eventually arriving in Mbolomboloudougouni and being irrationally excited about the whole thing, despite the fact that both of these places look exactly the same and I didn't see any hippos on the way. Maps are documents which say to you "I know you're bored NOW, but one day you'll be walking around on me !" It's frustrating in one way, but a straw to cling to in another way. They give funny impressions too. I remember when I was a kid I had a map, and Senegal was coloured in green. Being in Africa and being green, I assumed that Senegal was completely covered in tropical forest, monkeys and hippos, and it took quite a long time for me to realise that this wasn't the case. In the same way, I'm hoping to find out, once I get to Nkongogonogorogo that the red line to Mbolomboloudougouni isn't a road at all, but a little path through the jungle to be walked along and hacked through with a machete and where you have to sleep in a tent when the night falls. As usual, at this point, MSN windows start flashing and you realise that you're still in your room next to a 6 lane road in a moderately big European city, and you've suddenly become bored again.

Third thought of the day. Will anyone actually bother to struggle through this uninspired and uninspiring post ? I haven't read it again and probably won't be bothered either. It's been a way to make the time pass more than anything. If you fancy something more interesting, go to the Google Earth home page, download it and zoom in. That's what I'm off to do right now. Wishing a good Saturday night to all...