one of the good things about being ill is it thoroughly defocusses the mind. when you have a hacking cough, your nose is streaming, a sore throat, a headache, and barely have the energy to drag yourself from recumbent to vertical then back to recumbent after hopefully having aimed the stream accurately, the little things that tend to preoccupy you in 'health' such as wondering whether world peace is achievable, whether you'll ever work again, or where you left that really nice 2B pencil get shunted off into some misty siding of the mind where they just have to bloody well wait until this clanky old slow train of hacking and head-clutching and dreaming - oh the dreams! - finally trails itself out into the shimmery evaporations of recovery.