Postcard from Georgia

REM, Flannery O'Connor, mystery illnesses... and a lot of eating

Hello!

First of all apologies for my absence last week. I’m in the US and on previous trips I’ve been able to continue the newsletter - usually writing during my son’s nap time - but on this trip to Georgia it has just been impossible. We were doing long drives in the car everyday, visiting different towns and cities around the state, and I was over-ambitious thinking I could get it done. Now we’ve settled in Savannah things are a little easier so this will be my one dispatch until next week when regular scheduling recommences.

The other reason you haven’t heard from me is that I’ve also been very ill, having developed horrendous flu-like symptoms a few days after getting four round, red bites on my wrists when I was staying in a wooded area where wild deer frolicked past our porch. My fear was it was some sort of tick-borne illness because I couldn’t work out how I had been struck down with such an awful sickness during warm weather in April and that my husband and son had entirely avoided, despite us being in the car together all day and often sleeping in the same bed (don’t get me started; we currently have a little middle-of-the-night visitor). Surely it had to be the bites.