I have been ill for the past few days. Sweaty, wheezing, easily fatigued. Everyone thinks it's covid but it's not, according to an antigen test.

Surceased: dog walks, yoga, work emails, responses to invites or Whatsapp group messages, plays and films at the local art centre, coffee dates at the castle cafe.

The husband brings me blood oranges, Lemsip, and library books. I languish in bed all day, alternately reading and wheezing. I do not have to be accommodating. This is the one pleasure of illness.

From my sickbed I watch the house martins soar and dip. What gives me pleasure: blood oranges from the Polish grocery, my dog's wagging tail, spotting the robin as it darts in and out of the hole that the mother-in-law had failed to thoroughly block.

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Last night I dreamt that I am hosting a party for family members, all of whom I do not recognise, but accept anyways as family, in the manner of someone who has been raised in the perplexingly extensive circles of kith and kin that typify Cambodian diasporic social life. Everyone wants a particular type of cake. I bake a cake that is not the cake everyone wants, but I insist it is that cake.

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I just ate an iced doughnut stuffed with creamy caramel sauce from the Polish grocery. It was ineffably delicious yet gross, an unrepeatable experience. The husband also got a packet of fried garlic bread, another sign, alas, of our incompatibility at a gastronomic level.

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