Thursday 13 March 2008

How to be ill


"Try to describe the smell and taste of things, not just the appearence," tutors on writing courses insist. In this case, best not.

Was it the toasted goats' cheese in the hotel restaurant in Fismes, left in the oven till the cheese curdled yellow and the bread hardened to a slate? Or an out-of-date bottle of orange juice, its deposits dusty in the bottom? Maybe it was a fleck of mud on my gloves as I'd piled in the dried apricots in Oeuilly. Whatever; one o'clock in the morning in the bathroom in Fismes was not a place to be.

I'd come to France with a small number of preconceptions, one of which was that French pharmacists fulfil a role of proto-doctor, a first point of advice on a range of illnesses and mushroom identification. Alas, I'm out of date again. Cherchez le white coat if you will, but hold tight on the mushrooms. Most people working in pharmacies shrug their shoulders and wander to the nearest shelf selling ... lice shampoo?

Above all don't, like I did, put on a heavy rucksack and go for a 6-mile hike after two days of actively evacuating all your food. Around St Leonard my head swam with red lights and my knees had to hand over to the walking poles. God smiled: we staggered into a handy bar with a cheerful pre-lunch chef offering tisane, toilets and a taxi back to Reims. We didn't have the energy to explain, just accepted the derision of the office workers (at 11 am?) when they saw such hyper-equipped walkers bottle it into a taxi at the first drop of rain.


That walk out of Reims along the canal had used up every last calorie I had in me. For the next two days my world shrank to a hotel befroom and an intense pain as my stomach swelled with the effort of processing something that wasn' there.

Ten years ago, living in Turkey, we fell foul - very foul - of e-coli poisoning, fondly referred to as Ankara Arse. After two weeks I called in a doctor whose advice in such circumstances I've followed ever since. Eat green lentils, boiled chicken or white fish and boiled potatoes. Drink mint tea. Avoid dairy and citrus, sugar and refined anything.

Fast forward to France 2008 and your only hope is to find a city with a Monoprix not too far from your hotel. Monoprix is a source of rotisserie-cooked chicken (pull the skin off first) and mounds of hot mashed potato that they'll happily shovel into a plastic dish and sell by the kilo. Wholewheat bread and bananas for fast, simple energy, and a carton of gazpacho, designed to be eaten cold, for the vitamins.

On his husbandly foraging trips David had come upon a shop selling books in English. Importantly, Agatha Christies, the most effective palliative known to man - or at least to me. David was just being understanding. Lying on my tummy with a pillow massaging the pain, swinging between sweat and clammy shivers, I let the mantra of death and blood and class and race prejudice soothe me.

A week later and I'm tentatively wondering if I'm over it. Not so over it that I can wholly enjoy walking through the magnificent Saturday market, but over it enough to eye the fresh salads in the brasserie and to order a small one with - gasp - a medicinal glass of red wine.

13 March 2008

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