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Apologies for this, but today there will be a short intermission due to me being ill. Or, at least, not being well last night, when for some unknown reason I experienced the worst attack of acid reflux I’ve ever had. Bit of a first world problem I know, but there’s something quite profoundly unpleasant about being awake at two o’clock in the morning groaning in pain from feeling as though someone’s pushed a red hot iron bar down your oesophagus. You know that feeling you get when you inadvertently take a huge mouthful of boiling hot tea and swallow it without meaning to and then you can feel it burning its way all the way down to your stomach? Well, it’s like that, only for hours on end. Sitting up is the only solution so you’re sitting up in bed, trying to keep warm, too tired to read and trying to be Zen about the waves of agony emanating from your chest. And even when you KNOW you’re not having a heart attack, there’s still the tiny little voice saying “But maybe you are…” And then Googling all the things you can do to stop acid reflux and realising that I’ve already done all of them. Take Gaviscon: check. Take ranitidine: check. Don’t be overweight: check. Don’t smoke: check. Don’t drink alcohol, eat spicy food, eat a big meal before you go to bed: check, check, check. Darn it. By 7am I’d had about three hours broken sleep, still had acid reflux so didn’t dare to eat anything more, had drunk half a bottle of Gaviscon and was fed up with it all. So I made an executive decision not to go to work. And very nice it was too – I went to sleep leaning against a heap of pillows at about 9am and didn’t wake up until 3, by which time fortunately the reflux had gone (I hope – just had something to eat, so fingers crossed…)A weird day, and not one I would particularly want to repeat, but there we are.

Back to normal service tomorrow.