Copyright scotsman
When you move house, you want to fill that new space with jolly memories. The clinking of glasses, freshly baked cakes and children’s laughter. Ha ha ha, what fun! Of course, fate has other plans. It’s not like you leave all of life’s bad baggage behind in the old property. Recently, after three months of coasting through nice new gaff stuff, like joyful pottering and having pals round, my husband was walloped by the lurgy. It’s inevitable, and part of breaking in a new property. You get to experience your house as a plague ward, and really find out how comfortable it really is while you’re at a low ebb. How does it feel, to stare deliriously at the bedroom ceiling, while coloured spots dance in front of your eyes, or to sleep on the bathroom floor? Is it still your dream home, while your head is dangling down the toilet, like you’re the victim of Grange-Hill-style bullying? This is the litmus test. So, just in time for Halloween, it suddenly felt like Armageddon around my place. His symptoms included extreme stomach pain and heartburn, and horror film levels of vomiting. He had to sleep sitting up on the couch, so the acid wouldn’t reflux quite so dramatically. The black dressing gown of doom was worn for three days straight, with the hood up, so he looked like one of the banshees on Celebrity Traitors. In our two and a bit decades of togetherness, I’ve never seen him this unwell. He’s had plenty of colds, but never a gastric thing, unless you count a hangover here or there. I always think of him as having a stomach of steel, with the same pH levels as dogs have in their gullets. He could probably eat stones. Maybe I was wrong. At one point, I really would not have been surprised if he’d turned green and his head had swivelled round 360 degrees. We painted a big red cross on the door, called the exorcist, and hunkered down for a few days of abject misery. There was no way of escaping the dramatics. Strangely, the acoustics in our new house mean that I could hear every whimper in any room that I was attempting to hide in. So, that was intense, and like seeing a movie in 4DX. I don’t think the culprit was the evil Norovirus that everyone seems to have contracted recently. He has convinced himself that it was, but I’m against that theory. I’m quite susceptible to stomach bugs, and I didn’t catch whatever he had. I’m so happy about that. I spent three days listening to him suffer, while selfishly praying that I would be spared. I was sympathetic, but at a distance. If they sold cheap hazmat suits in Florence & Fred at the nearby Tesco, I would’ve bought one. After all, I’m really not good with anything that involves nausea and vomiting. It’s my bete noir. Or, should I say, my barf noir. I’m paranoid enough that I’d say I have a spot of emetophobia. Anyway, I swerved it this time. If it WAS a bug, I might have managed to avoid it because we’re now lucky enough to have two bogs, and he - very gentlemanly, I must say, my kind sir - chose to do all his chundering in the wee cludgie, so I could avoid any potential viral mushroom cloud. He said it was quite comfortable to lie on that floor, because it’s not too cold. Probably we should just seal this room off now, and destroy it in a controlled explosion. Also, having a second bedroom has been useful. He went in there, with his wee bucket and his sweaty white face, and I guiltily starfished on the memory foam mattress in our boudoir and watched TikTok. So, the distance that we could foster may have spared me. Still, I think the Norovirus is tougher than that. It would’ve found a way. It could’ve oozed across the floorboards, or scuttled through the water pipes. Like spiders do, it waits around, then creeps into your mouth when you’re sleeping. It sends you a text message and, if you open it, you’re instantly infected. The message says “Gotcha, LOL”. If it had been that common winter plague, I would have caught it for sure. Instead, I imagine it was food poisoning. The guilty culprit, I think, was a rather posh dish - steak tartare - that he ordered at an upmarket restaurant. Isn’t it always the way? You only get e-coli or salmonella from the finest places. It’s the only thing that he had, that I didn’t eat. I still remember him asking me if I wanted to try a spoonful, and I said no, for some prescient reason. Perhaps because I once had food poisoning after eating venison tartare, so I’m always a bit trepidatious. Anyway, thank goodness I didn’t, or my house would’ve become a sick ward pour deux. And it was nasty. There were a few points, when he couldn’t keep down water, that I thought I should call NHS24. However, he pulled through. After a few recovery days of zero appetite and simmering mood, now he’s back to full health. He’s been eating kimchi, sauerkraut and kefir to try to repopulate his microbiome, which will soon be transformed from desert to rainforest. Thankfully, the experience hasn’t put him off our new house. On the contrary, it now feels as if it’s been properly christened. And it’s nice to know, for future reference, that we’ve got a very comfy bathroom floor. Read more: “I moved to Leith two months ago and this is what I’ve learnt about Edinburgh’s ‘coolest’ area” Read more: “I moved to Leith, so I thought I should go and see Hibs play but this tiny thing changed my mind” Read more: “I visited a wonderful new cafe that made me love my city’s lively coffee scene even more”
