The shingles has lingered much longer than I imagined it would. I felt so guilty about being off sick during the busiest period of the year that I foolishly went back too soon, working three long shifts from 22nd December until Christmas Eve and then on Boxing Day. I somehow made it in the day after that, but had to come home after three hours, barely able to hold myself upright. I've been off again ever since. I'm hopeful of a more cautious return to the fray next week, this time easing in with short shifts to start with.
With so much time to kill, I initially tried listening to music or reading a book with limited success, agitated by the pain and fuzzy-headed from the painkillers. I don't have a TV, but I do have my trusty laptop and eventually found distraction by revisiting several television programmes of my youth via YouTube. I passed the hours reconnecting with episodes of such shows as Callan, Z Cars, Softly Softly Task Force, Quiller, The Sweeney, along with a few others from the 1960s & 70s, that I remember watching with my parents. The sedately paced Softly Softly Task Force was Dad's favourite back then, whereas I preferred the rough and tumble (and smoking...the endless smoking!) of The Sweeney. The distant familiarity of Barlow, Watt, Carter and Regan's respective adventures was strangely comforting, but my how the world has changed since I last watched them.
