Take me now ...

I have a good old friend recently returned to Sydney after quite a few years away. Without going into detail I can say those years were not easy for her, not easy at all - now that she's back perhaps things will improve, who knows. Anyway some of us put on a dinner for her Saturday night but in the end she couldn't come - a major cleaning blitz at her new place led to an attack of sciatica so that was that. When I heard she wouldn't be going I thought, just for a nano-second, that perhaps I shouldn't either. The sore throat I'd had for a couple of days hadn't got any worse but it hadn't gone away either. But off I went and had a great time, only to find, on leaving, that the sore throat had turned into some kind of inferno which made breathing unlikely and speech impossible. I was walking home from Marrickville at about 2.30 am through surreally darkened and beautifully deserted streets and all I could think about was lozenges. Picked some up at the all night servo on the corner of Wardell Street before staggering the rest of the way to Summer Hill. Well. I've had sore throats before, who hasn't? Never had one like this though. All day yesterday I thought of what my friend says when the question of aging and all of its indignities comes up. Take me now! she says and laughs her silvery laugh. The fact that last week I had a check-up and all of my results came back disappointingly normal seemed beside the point: I could hear my train a-comin' ... The perhaps comical side of this is that I'm off to NZ for ten days on Thursday, during which time I'll do a few readings: how do you read without a voice? How do you even go to the bank? Thought of pushing a note across the counter, then thought better of it. Sometimes, on random occasions, I open my mouth and attempt speech: nothing comes out that anything except a toad would respond to. Call me toad, then. And take me now.