the plague

I have fallen prey to the plague that John has been referring to. It started off as a relatively harmless sore throat which could not be eased by copious amounts of water and orange juice consumption. Then came the sneezing, which is fine. Next, the waking up throughout the night because my silly little body can't get itself around needing to breathe purely through my mouth, resulting in Apnoea.

Then, the breathing-like-a-walrus routine. I had not realised I had reached this stage until I was asked my my housemates at dinner if I was ok, as there were some slightly disconcerting breathing noises coming from my end of the table.

Perhaps what's most disappointing about this cold is the debilitation of my senses. I can't taste or smell anything. Then last night I burnt my tongue on a cup of hot chocolate, which might as well have been some warmed, diluted soil - I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to tell. This morning I have woken up with an incredibly husky voice which makes me sound like I've been on 40 a day for the last couple of decades. So now, I'm a cross between a walrus with a camel-like tongue and the voice of a smoker. Nice.

By the way, in case you were wondering about the photo I have included, it's of a cell tissue of a chimera plant. I was going to include a picture of normal, nose-blowing tissues, but when I googled 'tissues', and this came up I thought it was far more interesting. The name 'Chimera' orignates from 'Indo-European root', where Chimera is a mythical creature which is made up of the front parts of a lion, the middle parts of a goad, and the tail of a snake. I think I'll stick to my walrus-camel-like state.

In other news, last Friday saw the handing in of my beloved Dissertation, who, although I had grown fond of, needed to have some time away from me - we'd been seeing a little too much of each other to see things objectively. We've seen many happy and nearly tragic times together, including the memorable near-death experiences on two occasions. The first, when my ipod shuffle decided it had had enough of its existence in my pocket and cunningly decided to leap out of my pockey whilst I was cycling, completely unaware of what was taking place underneath my nose. The second time was just the other week, when Kingston, the newly employed guard and saver of the dissertation after the demise of ipod, decided that perhaps my editing of Dissertation wasn't adequate, and decided to go for a little spin in the washing machine. Needless to say, Dissertation seemed to have permanently disappeared. But, after a bit of prayer, scolding and drying, Kingston was feeling back to himself and behaved wonderfully for the remainder of his time as guard of Dissertation.

(Sorry about the change in font size - couldn't work out how to change it back to normal.)