Meh.*. I was meant to be meeting jane_the_23rd at lunchtime to go and see Vanity Fair. Alas, last night I had a scary fit of wheezing, ie my half-arsed version of an asthma attack. Despite being the only member of my family who isn't actually an asthmatic, I still manage to aquire a minor chest infection every couple of years, and it looks like I have done so again. I woke up at about half past four and because my breathing was so shallow and ragged, I couldn't actually get back to sleep again. And I didn't want to wake up P because he was getting up at half past five anyway in order to finish one of his dreadful plinky-plonks, so I lay there staring at the ceiling wondering if I had some terrible lung disease and feeling more and more panicky, in that horrible very-early-morning way. Finally P woke up, and was appalled that I hadn't woken him sooner. He calmed me down a bit, but I couldn't get to sleep until about half past seven, and I woke at ten feeling slightly less wheezy but still, not up to going into town in the rain and sitting in a cinema where I could annoy my fellow cinema-goers with my hacking consumptive coughs. So here I am, writing this in bed like a Victorian invalid. Well, a Victorian invalid with a laptop. Hmmm. Anyway! I shan't be a lonely waif for too long, as daegaer and barsine are coming over later to watch Lord Peter DVDs (huzzah!), but right now, I'm feeling a bit fragile. Cough.

*As my new icon says - more Hogarth! This is the miserable bride in the first painting in the Marriage a la Mode sequence, on which I wrote many a showy essay in my youth. She cheers up quite a bit in the later paintings in the sequence, but only because she's become a gambling addict and is having loads of affairs. Also, her husband has bought a child prostitute who has the pox. Ah, the 18th century! What larks!