For a hardened atheist like me, it was quite a shock to open my eyes this morning and think, “Crikey, there really is an afterlife”. And to discover that Hell had been modelled on our back bedroom. Always was a bit untidy, but not that bad, I thought.
Eventually, the terrible truth revealed itself: I was still of this earth. I remembered I’d quarantined myself in the servants’ quarters while I still have this cold. The main consolation was not to have suffered the eternal torment of expiring before the end of the football season. Since Nick Hornby first mentioned the terror of dying without knowing who won the FA Cup, in Fever Pitch, it’s become the principal worry in my life.
To celebrate my resurrection, I even managed a sort of run today. It began as a run anyway, though it did end up as a walk, after a violent paroxysm of coughing and spluttering a half mile or so into it. Should I have gone out? Probably not, but it cheered me up, and at least I still managed to get a brisk 3+ mile walk onto the scoreboard. Some people will say I shouldn’t count it, but I’m counting it, OK…? Good.
