The lost long weekend

Once again the Norovirus hits Upstart Blogger HQ. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and the majority of today have all blurred into one long, and very sleepless, weekend. The ferocity of the Norovirus means that it can strike, without warning, at anytime. Prevention is pretty much impossible, unless you cut yourself off from the outside world and live in some sort of hermetically environment.

In case the Norovirus is new to you here’s a quick link to its Wikipedia entry.

If you have ever eaten or drunk anything that you did not prepare yourself, from start to finish, then you are at risk. Sounds a little harsh, perhaps, but it’s absolutely true. Every time you eat food that has been prepared by someone other than yourself there is a chance, inversely proportional to the standards of hygiene employed by those doing the preparation, that you get struck by Norovirus.

Given that I have been on the receiving end of this nasty virus twice before how did I manage to catch it this time?

The front running candidate is ice. Yes, ice. Frozen water.

Las thursday I played a gig at a reasonably standard jazz club. Standard in the sense that it was dark and ever so slightly claustrophobic. I’m always careful what I drink, usually taking bottled mineral water. But this time my preparation wasn’t so great and my trusty bottle of Evian wasn’t loaded into the car. I arrived at the club, set up as usual and ordered a mineral water, with ice.

The mineral water was out of a bottle, the ice was added out of sight. With hindsight, it’s easy to see that the contents of the bottle were virginal whilst the ice could have easily passed through numerous human beings, chemical treatment, miles of pipes and goodness knows how many other potentially infectious hurdles before before hitting the club owners freezer, where it could have picked up even more bugs.

Before I had time to realise my mistake, perhaps because I was too busy looking to see how many people were in the club and all the other subconscious checks and balances a jazz musician makes in the time before going on stage, I had taken a few mouthfuls of the potentially infected fluid.

The next morning, Friday morning, the horror began.

And that is why I am only now returning to my usual blogging schedule.

Thankfully the vast majority of my income is passive, generated by this and my other blog, and has not been damaged in any way by my unintentional break. Proof, if any were needed, that blogging is not only an industry that has no barriers to entry, but one that offers genuine and lasting income security.