Soldiers

So it’s round 2 of Battle of the Blogs –

I am here , and so too is Ms Melancholy.

That’s So Pants (who kindly nominated me in the first place) is here –

and in the immortal words of Shakespeare’s King Henry V :

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;”

So I thought I’d kick off by talking about my thyroid problems - just to show I can get stuck in. I am imitating the action of the tiger, though modest stillness and humility would be more becoming. It is like this: I have an immune system that does not know its arse from its elbow. It is, as I speak, trying to demolish at least one organ that I could name and is responsible for my having to take daily doses of thyroxine so I don’t fall flat on my face. It pretends to be working for me by declaring all-out war on, say, a harmless bit of pollen in the air. Actually it declares all-out war on everything. This exhausts me. Immune system doesn’t care. It is delinquent as well as stupid and stability is something it doesn’t suffer gladly. Thyroxine is either too little or too much. So I am unbalanced, one way or the other. At the moment it is the other, which is why I am up at an ungodly hour.

It’s dark and blustering outside, but I’m here with my anglepoise lamp and the circle of light it makes on the desk. No candles, but I am all set up for the theme of light in darkness and how the flame within grows brighter when the darkness gets bigger. But I’m not going to do that. There are people who keep going with no apparent source of light at all, or some for whom the going is too hard, brave soldiers. I’m one of the lucky ones.

And the hour is late, or early, depending on how you look at it.