Free Range - Your flight has been delayed

I’m a long way from home and feeling very homesick. Getting here was easy - free tickets, immediate departure - but I’m not sure when I’ll get back: the Land of Ill Health is notoriously slow in processing exit visas.

On arrival, Customs confiscated my sense of humour, energy and higher brain functions, so I’ve got nothing in my luggage but undiagnosed pain and the speed and neocortex of a tuatara.

Back home I suppose things are just as usual. The sun’s probably still making the frost glitter in the mornings and the little Kingfisher’s still perching on his favourite stretch of telegraph wire, while the postie drones by in his little red van each day.

Over here though, everything’s out of whack. I’m stuck in an endless present, but the haggard grey face staring at me from the bathroom mirror suggests that time is simultaneously careering along at warp speed. While I get out of breath brushing my teeth, my friend’s son is incandescent with rude health, although he’s hobbling on crutches with a broken leg.

Here, mashed potato is Haute Cuisine. Google only displays websites about gruesome diseases with symptoms exactly like yours. The La-Z-Boy recliner chair, an object of derision back home, is a modern design icon here because its embrace affords pain-free hours of sleep.

I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been here. For a start it’s not true that “without your health you have nothing”. I might not have sleep, appetite or physical self-confidence, but I’ve rediscovered the kindness of friends and husband. I’ve met a lot of new kind people too: doctors, nurses, radiographers and health service administrators.

How else would I have met the great drug warlords Tramadol, Voltaren and Codeine and their henchmen Omeprazole, Clarithromycin and Metoclopramide? Their camp followers Nausea, Muddle-Headedness and Constipation are an ugly lot, but they’ve helped me realise that limitless fortitude is just not my thing. I’m not going to be the type to “battle bravely” with a fatal disease. I’m more likely to whine and complain and then ungratefully chuck in the towel.

Hopefully, I’ll be home again soon. While I’m waiting for my visa I’m going to read a book I picked up at the airport. It’s called “1001 Places To Visit Before You Die”.

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One morning as I was writing this column I went to the cupboard for some printer paper. A bird arrowed suddenly out of the cupboard and flew straight into my face. It battered desperately at a closed window, then fluttered into a frightened huddle behind a stack of picture frames.

After I’d recovered from my own fright, I opened the window, picked up the bird and held it at the window sill. Not knowing how long it had been trapped, I wondered if it would be strong enough to fly. The moment I opened my hand it was in flight and in a few seconds it was just a black dart in the blue sky above the paddocks. I’m taking that as an omen.