I’ve spent the past couple of weeks sharing my life with some malignant bug that has left me feeling weak and pathetic on those relatively rare occasions when I’m not rushing to the loo. It’s not exactly been a barrel of laughs, apart from the long sleeps which have been accompanied by excitingly strange and vivid dreams. They’ve been a bit like being on drugs. Also, the cat Nelson has been a brick, spending much of the time on the bed curled up at my feet, a true friend and companion in time of need.
I’ve written before about how music doesn’t seem to work when you are suffering from depression. I’ve now also discovered that it’s not much use when one is more generally unwell. I received a digital radio for my birthday for bedside use, and thought I would pass the days drifting in and out of sleep to the strains of theJazz, the irritatingly monickered new DAB station that has been broadcasting test transmissions since Christmas but which formally launched over the Easter weekend.
But, after a couple of tracks, even great jazz becomes an irritant rather than a pleasure, as the befuddled brain struggles to keep up with what’s going on. So my chief pleasure between epic slumbers has been a wonderful little book by Humphrey Lyttelton, one of the great men of British jazz and chairman of that superb antidote to panel games, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue on Radio Four.
It Just Occurred to Me (Robson Books, £12.99) is accurately described by its author as ‘a hotchpotch of thoughts and memories’ ranging back and forth over his long life and taking in such important matters as the way to make perfect scrambled eggs and the best defence against six of the best at Eton (slices of ham down the back of the trousers apparently).
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