I hate feeling ill. I’ve spent the last few days feeling decidedly under the weather and out of sorts. I had forgotten that sometimes bodies can be painful when they decided to get sick … and worse, it is very tiring. So much so that I have found that falling asleep in the afternoon with a cat on my chest makes the old body feel quite exhausted, which in surely not the reason why the body feels it needs the extra sleep?

This is one of the things that I can remember from being a small child. Didn’t matter for what reason I was designated as being “sick”, one of the most recommended nostrums was to “sleep it better”. In younger days I can remember being held by my mother when I felt ‘crook’ until I fell asleep and then waking up later in my bed all snugly warm. As I got bigger I can remember my mother sitting on my bed, soothing my fevered brow and singing a lullaby in the middle of the day until I fell asleep. I remember thinking that sleeping things better was silly, but always I would fall asleep and sleep my way back to feeling better.
When my children were small and were miserable with one of those disgusting diseases that children are prone to (I can’t bear the sight of a snotty dribbling nose that colds produce in toddlers * shudders delicately *) I would cuddle them until they fell asleep and then put them into a warm bed, or as they grew older sat and sang to them until they fell into the arms of Morpheus, the Greek deity of sleep, and told them as my mother had told me “You’ll feel better after a good sleep.”

There is only one thing wrong with my current unwell condition. Although I had a sleep this afternoon, the only person who sat on my bed and sang to me was my cat. Perhaps I can teach him to sing a better lullaby that “purr, purr”, but I have noticed that it is only when I am feeling really unwell that he will join me in an afternoon snooze and sing to me … perhaps in some way he is just trying to tell me that I’ll feel better after a good sleep?