01/05/13

Just beginning to emerge from the formative manifestations of a bad cold (what one is good?) during the painful course of which I spent most of my time spitting (dribbling would probably be a more apt description) into the small red plastic bowl I habitually set aside specifically for such purposes. For me, ejecting the excessive cold-infested sputum from my mouth usually takes precedence over flushing it down with fruit juice or sucking on some lozenge or tablet-like sweet largely intended to combat such a profligate condition and induce one to swallow into a sore throat. Not that I am entirely bereft of either liquid or lozenges, but spitting, I have to say, comes more naturally in the circumstances and is, besides, the only way to ensure that there is no excessive build-up of phlegm or sputum in the stomach likely, at some point under some provocation or other, to culminate in vomiting and, hence, total wretchedness. Having a cold like this is so awful, so distasteful and, frankly, humiliating … that one sincerely regrets being alive, particularly when, as in my case, there's an awful lot of hammering and low-drilling noise in close proximity to where one is perforce obliged to lie, as though on one's deathbed.

Frankly, I am never so rebelliously anti-life than in times like this, when the mere thought of religious worship makes me want to puke and curse and rant and rave and generally go into some kind of total exasperation with the religious status quo, which strikes one as being obscenely anachronistic and of no consolation whatsoever!

It's no wonder that, in recovering from the experience noted above, one has an enhanced thirst and accordingly drinks, at least in my case, a fair amount of diluted fruit juice, as though replenishing the body of fluids lost during the preceding twenty-four hours.

I have now entered the nose-blowing and coughing phase of the illness, and that isn't much fun either.