My voice has been sensitive for about ten years now – I’ve no idea why. It used to be when I got the occasional bug. It would go to my throat and my voice would go – sometimes for up to three weeks.
Kazia and I held our first official talk on Saturday and my voice decided to start packing up on Friday morning. Luckily it held out for Saturday but when I woke up Sunday it was well and truly done for.
All perfectly normal stuff – to lose our voice now and again.
Or so I thought!! Out on my dog walk this morning I attempted to say, ‘Hello,’ but a squeak emerged instead. I whispered, kind of, that I’d lost my voice. The lady said, ‘Oh god you haven’t got the dreaded lurgy have you?! That’s apparently one of the symptoms!’ I explained that no, it was quite common for me, and she went off on a rant about how she’d had enough of it all now and why can’t they leave us to it. So that was good to hear at least!
Then today I call the carpet fitters as I borrowed samples from them three months ago and still haven’t returned them. Oops! I explained that I’d drop them in on Wednesday and she went, ‘You haven’t got C o v i d have you?’ You could hear the fear in her voice.
Two years and four months on people are STILL going on about it! It stuns me every time that it’s still on people’s fear radar. When are people going to get used to being ill again I wonder?
Now the media is pushing the fear of a glorious summer. On the A14 today a big sign was lit up telling us all to be careful as ‘exceptional temperatures’ or something like that and to carry water on our journeys.
I’m so relieved the state continues to treat me like a two year old – how else would I manage every day if I didn’t have the state telling me it’s hot and I needed to drink water?!
Old people are told to stay in – that it’s too dangerous to step outside! Our guitar teacher told us his five year old daughter isn’t allowed out in school playtime because it’s too hot. This is utter madness! What about the benefits to being outside and getting a great dose of Vitamin D? No, you mustn’t do that – you’d be putting yourself in danger!
My mum has been in farming all her life. She remembers long, hot summers out in the fields harvesting the wheat and barley. We’ve moved to the area she was brought up at and she loves driving round seeing all the parched fields as it takes her back to her childhood days.
It takes six weeks to dry out wheat and barley before harvesting. They would then burn the stems creating a great nutritional base for the next crop. All those days are gone now – fear of fire for one reason (despite that practise being used for thousands of years in far hotter countries than ours). If we didn’t have six weeks of dry weather regularly we’d never have grown wheat and barley in this country!
I’m so glad I don’t listen to the news as the fear mongering is constant. In winter no doubt we’ll have the usual round of ‘worst winter for twenty years predicted,’ so we all get scared of winter. I feel so sorry for people remaining in this perpetual cycle of fear – missing out on wonderful days at the beach with their family because a paper told them it was too hot.
While millions of people travel abroad to experience the temperatures we are seeing this week – all excited to actually feel some warmth on their skin after barely any sun since the glorious 12 weeks of lockdown two years ago – we’re told we can’t enjoy it as it’s far too hot!
Back to our speech – we have another one coming up this Sunday at the Freemind Festival with Tom Fortes-Mayer. I’m desperate to add some of this into it but we’ve only got half an hour and we’re already up to that length! I’m currently drinking sage, mint & thyme tea with a tablespoon of honey and it works wonders. I know even if my voice isn’t fully back I can get through the talk if I drink a big mug of that half an hour before.
Does anyone have any other recommendations for a poorly voice? I’m hoping plenty of sunshine too as we had the whole afternoon at the beach and apart from the hoards of dying people lying on the beach, or stuck in their cars without water, we had a really lovely time. If only they’d listened to the news eh?
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