Reading

Above: the offices of the Sons of Temperance Friendly Society in Blackfriars Road, designed by Arthur Russell and opened in 1910.

I have been very ill with what is obviously swine 'flu, although NHS Direct maintained it wasn't on the grounds that I hadn't come into contact with any known sufferers (although we now know that the disease is everywhere). The television screens have been full of people telling us how "mild" the illness is (these are no doubt the same medical "experts" who assured us with absolute certainty that mad cow disease could not spread to humans). Anyway, the illness knocked me out for two solid weeks, and when I finally returned to work I was regarded with suspician as a malingerer ("It's supposed to be mild...").

A month later and I'm still not well.

One of the compensations has been the amount of reading I have been able to do. I am currently reading George Orwell's Coming Up For Air. I was surprised by the opening pages in which Orwell (via the main character) attacks building societies as agents of the financial enslavement of the lower middle classes.