Phases and Sunny Random Rome

Does anyone else have phases in their life when everything seems to go wrong?? Well, I do and I'm in the middle of one now. It's really getting me down.

 

Since MONDAY I have:

 

1. Developed a nasty cough with sore throat and aching shoulders.
2. The cough/cold resulted in our missing dancing for the second week in a row so we will be woefully behind next week. Worse though, we also missed out on free guest list tickets to see the Kaiserchiefs and aftershow passes and potentially let down the pal who had arranged for the free passes.
3. This also meant that I ended up sleeping in the spare room last night to spare Richard from the explosive coughing and sneezing and incessant blocked nose, mouth-breathing (ok, snoring!). It's the right thing to do but I hate not waking up beside him.
4. Lost my Sheffield Wednesday season ticket (which I specifically took out of my purse so as not to take it to Rome) which will cost me a tenner to replace.
5. Forgotten a golf competition and thus let down not 1 but 3 women which makes me feel terrible but which is also terrible timing. I will be now not be very popular at next week's AGM in which I am being put forward for the Committee (which I don't really care about) but at which I will be speaking out against a serious issue (which does matter to me). I haven't forgotten a comp for years and I hate letting people down, why now!
6. Lost £20 out of my jeans pocket while walking the dogs on Tuesday lunchtime. This meant not only that I couldn't buy the birthday cards I'd intended to when I got the shop but also that I had to retrace my steps back up the hill in the vain hope of finding the notes and thus tiring my cold-ridden self out.
7. Discovered that my blood pressure, which had been under control for a year or so, is no longer under control so I have to go through the whole blood tests and monitoring malarkey all over again.
8. Missed a SW weigh-in Tuesday night for the football and a pre-football Valentines meal (which was lovely actually) but am conscious that I've put on weight since my last weigh-in and feel fat and unequipped to do much about it at the moment.

(Oh, and, Sheffield Wednesday lost at home on Tuesday night and played appallingly. It is the first time they have lost 2 games in a row all season and now our promotion hopes are wobbling alarmingly.)

 

I'm shattered and feel blue and grumpy and just want to collapse onto the sofa and for Richard to make it all better. But he has also developed the same cold/cough so will probably not be feeling particularly comforting himself. 


 

So, I'll soldier on and hope that we both feel better soon and that the universe stops having a go at me even sooner.

And, in the meantime, I'll post some random sunny pics from Rome to cheer me up.  These were taken on our walk back from the Vatican on Day 2.  Below is the Ponte Sant'Angelo opposite the Castel Sant'Angelo.  We couldn't go in to the Castle that day as it was shut but managed to go round the following day when it opened at 2pm, having finally cleared the ice from its terraces.

We then walked miles back in the direction of the hotel.  This is in front of the famous Fontana Dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers) in the Piazza Navona.  The four statues in the fountain are meant to represent the great rivers of the world - the Nile, the Danube, the Ganges and the Amazon.  Trouble is, we couldn't work out which was which apart from the Nile which is blindfolded as at that time the source of the river was unknown.  Come on guidebooks, get it together!

 Bernini's elephant with an obelisk mounted on top (they do like their obelisks do the Romans!).  It's a rubbish photo as the statue was being maintained so was surrounded by hoardings.  I had to peek through a grill to get this but I love the gentle expression of wisdom on the elephant's face.  That's how I think of elephants having seen so many of them in the wild - it's amazing to me that an Italian artist from that era could capture it so perfectly.

 And finally, true to our form, we hit the Spanish Steps just as it was getting dark!  It was lovely though - a very evocative area.  I could just picture all those rich toffs from England and France hitting Rome on their Grand Tour, ignoring the art and culture and getting stuck into the bars and brothels.  A bit like our 18-30 holidays nowadays!

I like the fact that there is an English Tea Room right next to the Spanish Steps.  And also it was fun gazing into the windows of all the posh designer shops on the Via Condotti.  Most seemed to be aiming their goods at miniscule Asian women judging on the sizes and styles which predominated.  maybe they are the only ones buying high-end designer stuff these days??

 Finally we dipped into a church I'd read about - Sant Ignazio di Loloya.  It is the second Jesuit church in Rome (after Il Gesu) and was simply stunning inside.   

Just to the right of the below was the main dome which Rich and I both stared up at and even commented that it was nearly as impressive as St Peter's.  Only to read later than night back in the hotel room that there WAS no main dome - they had run out of money or something so a false perspective, tromp 'oeil, dome had been painted instead.  Well, it fooled us!  I wish now I'd taken a photo of it to see how good it was.