Sniffles

Oh dear, the common cold. Bunged up. Head aching like my brain's trying to burst of my skull. Ears aching too. Sneezing at a hundred miles an hour - straining neck muscles and tendons. Eyes turning pink like a white rabbit's - unearthly. I am reduced to mucus and snot production. Our wastebaskets filling up with evil damp tissues. This afternoon I walked out to the local chemists (pharmacy/ drugstore) to buy a bottle of "Benylin". I can't taste my food properly and I'm more tetchy than usual. Sleep that seems essential is disturbed by this miserable condition.

It seems to happen every year. The virus creeps up on you, then before you know it there are invisible thumbs pressing into your eye sockets and your bones ache and you can't concentrate and you have zero energy. I don't know how I got through the last two days at work but like the idiot I am, I went in as usual - Mr Dependable - never miss a day and never get any acknowledgement for that dutiful record - twenty five years without a day off. I must be stark, raving bonkers! There have been many times in the past when I have felt quite poorly only to find that in my free period I'm covering for an absent teacher who's probably less ill than I am.

So now back to the sniffles, coughs, sneezes, aches, rabbit eyes, tissues, mucus and snot that make for a classic common cold - another one of God's practical jokes or perhaps it was Eve, the serpent and that juicy apple.