What a Week!

It started badly last Monday morning. I noticed my neighbours' burning heap still smouldering as I went for my walk. They'd burnt off on the weekend on the burnsite on Bond's lane, taking advantage of the dry weather. It'd been a good burn, with just an old stump now flickering flame with a gust of wind. There was plenty of heat still in the ashes so I decided to drag my prunings from the fruit trees onto it after breakfast.
This done I went off to pick camellia bunches at Keith's and Huite's and returned before lunch to stoke the fire, that is, throw in sticks that fall outside the fire into the middle. Somehow while doing this a sharp stick burning at one end must have caught as I was throwing in an armful. The hot end stabbed me in the soft inner part of the right upper arm, below the bicep. Painful? Yes.
After lunch the bee stung me in the left eyebrow so the rest of the day was less than comfortable as I worked cutting laurel from the top of Steve's hedge, straining feet and lower legs balancing on the ladder, and hands, upper arms and shoulders reaching and twisting to bring the prunings down with the pole cutters. It was warm and windy, I forgot to take a drink and soon had a fierce thirst. I was buggered by the end of the day. It was in the bath later that my eye swelled up as a reaction to the bee sting.
Tuesday morning I was OK, if not full bottle. It was picking at Huite's again that I first didn't feel well. He was following me around, talking, and annoying me without meaning to. I had no energy. Huite suggested I look at his plum tree which was about to flower and his pieris bush at the back of the shed. I kept polite, despite wanting only to get out of there, and pushed on and picked the plum blossom and the pieris. It was a tough couple of hours. The rest of the day was the same, I dragged myself through at slow pace.
The nature of my ill feeling revealed itself that night. Gastric flu. I was sore all over and crook in the guts. Most of Wednesday I spent in bed, till I had to get up to meet the bloke the council was providing to help me the next day. Thursday was the big tree planting day in Nobelius Park. There were many hiccups. Some trees delivered were the wrong trees, some meant to be delivered at 1.00pm came at three, my helper had to leave before three so it was a long hard day. All the while the wind blew angrily, and being so dry lately made watering important. Friday I felt much better but crashed again in the evening and was crook in bed again Saturday. Sunday things picked up and I did some mowing.
Noone else in the house had the gastric flu. I'm suspicious that the bee sting had some influence. Perhaps all my antibodies went to fight the bee sting, leaving me vulnerable to the other thing. It's nice to be recovered now, and reflect that the week from hell I endured was better than being stung in the chest by a stingray barb. Steve Irwin died a year ago.