Raddled
I am currently riddled with the tail end of a cold. Not flu, I know that whenever a man gets a germ that results in the increased use of tissue and consumption of hot lemony drinks he describes it as flu, but this was not flu.
Flu results in joint pain, head pain and a general feeling that 40% of your brain and about 99% of your energy has gone for a holiday at the sort of trailer park featured in the film ‘the last starfighter’. It also means you have disjointed, infected slumber where you yourself dream about taking a holiday in that trailer park. This is of course nonsense because the trailer park in question is residential.
Yesterday was, if I’m honest, a bit of a blur. I had a reaction to the allegedly ‘non-drowsy’ hot berry drink I was using to ease my cold. Well, actually it was hot berry laced with all sorts of chemicals but surprisingly they concentrate on the berry goodness element of the drink on the labelling. What I remember is a sensation of hot ribena and then waking up at two in the afternoon feeling a bit queer and not at all surprised that housewives get hooked on painkillers, it makes the dull bit of the afternoon go quicker than two sherries and an episode of ‘antiques roadshow’.
Attitudes to illness change by age and gender I think. If you’re a bloke, you are instantly on your guard about confessing to any illness because your wife or girlfriend, sensing that this may be a ruse to guilt her into bringing you an endless supply of drinks and snacks while you lounge on the couch under a blanket surrounded by paperbacks and watching ‘lord of the rings’, will advise you that compared to menstrual cramps, your mild nausea is nothing. This is bad for two reasons, firstly because it makes you feel like a wuss and raises the possibility that you should be the one delivering the snacks, drinks and hot water bottles every month until menopause, hysterectomy or a mercy killing and secondly because ugh…who wants to talk about menstruating?
Blokes tend to bear external pain with fortitude. Got your head trapped in a lawnmower? Run it under the cold tap and it’ll be fine. It’s when our own bodies rise up against us that we feel pathetic, especially if it’s the result of some germ getting the better of us.
Which is why this morning when I woke up, I thought I felt better than I did yesterday, then I coughed for ten minutes and knew I was better than yesterday, as that was a twenty minute coughing spree that, if it had gone on any longer, could have been considered performance art and got me a grant.
Yesterday was odd though, three berry drinks in a day meant that I was in a mild daze all day, spent the afternoon asleep and went to bed early. This is excellent practice for retirement.
Flu results in joint pain, head pain and a general feeling that 40% of your brain and about 99% of your energy has gone for a holiday at the sort of trailer park featured in the film ‘the last starfighter’. It also means you have disjointed, infected slumber where you yourself dream about taking a holiday in that trailer park. This is of course nonsense because the trailer park in question is residential.
Yesterday was, if I’m honest, a bit of a blur. I had a reaction to the allegedly ‘non-drowsy’ hot berry drink I was using to ease my cold. Well, actually it was hot berry laced with all sorts of chemicals but surprisingly they concentrate on the berry goodness element of the drink on the labelling. What I remember is a sensation of hot ribena and then waking up at two in the afternoon feeling a bit queer and not at all surprised that housewives get hooked on painkillers, it makes the dull bit of the afternoon go quicker than two sherries and an episode of ‘antiques roadshow’.
Attitudes to illness change by age and gender I think. If you’re a bloke, you are instantly on your guard about confessing to any illness because your wife or girlfriend, sensing that this may be a ruse to guilt her into bringing you an endless supply of drinks and snacks while you lounge on the couch under a blanket surrounded by paperbacks and watching ‘lord of the rings’, will advise you that compared to menstrual cramps, your mild nausea is nothing. This is bad for two reasons, firstly because it makes you feel like a wuss and raises the possibility that you should be the one delivering the snacks, drinks and hot water bottles every month until menopause, hysterectomy or a mercy killing and secondly because ugh…who wants to talk about menstruating?
Blokes tend to bear external pain with fortitude. Got your head trapped in a lawnmower? Run it under the cold tap and it’ll be fine. It’s when our own bodies rise up against us that we feel pathetic, especially if it’s the result of some germ getting the better of us.
Which is why this morning when I woke up, I thought I felt better than I did yesterday, then I coughed for ten minutes and knew I was better than yesterday, as that was a twenty minute coughing spree that, if it had gone on any longer, could have been considered performance art and got me a grant.
Yesterday was odd though, three berry drinks in a day meant that I was in a mild daze all day, spent the afternoon asleep and went to bed early. This is excellent practice for retirement.
1 Comments:
I'm sorry you felt bad, but aside from being certain that you were playing it up just like every other man on the planet (I mean, come on, you wrote a whole post about it..hehe), I must say that I had forgotten about the Last Starfighter....I used to LOVE that movie!!!!
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