Ok probably not just me. From the looks of my social media and the reports I hear from the outside world, I am not the only resident of mucusville. I am, however, the only resident of my own personal mucusville.

Which is good, because if anyone else was living in my mucus that would be weird.

I have a cold. Or flu. Or an RSV? Or something similar with another name but NOT the Thing-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, because I have taken TTSNBN-tests daily and they all say it is not that. Whatever it is, it is a) awful, and b) nothing to complain about really because, as we have all seen, it could be so much worse, and frequently is.

And yet, complain about it I have.
Been…
Doing? Not sure how that sentence should work. But I have been complaining and still I complain. Because context is everything, and it is the worst I, personally, have felt in bloody ages. My family are all bored of me complaining to at them, so I shall complain here instead…

On day one, I woke up with a scratchy throat. Three hours later, while watching television with Doozer, I knocked the remote control onto the floor, slid off the sofa to get it… and then just carried on gently slipping down, down, down, unfurling onto the floor, enjoying its coolness and its bigness and thinking it might just be nice to stay there a while.

I was meant to be doing something that evening, a party I was really looking forward to, so I was determined to be well, and to that end I went for a nap… and woke up feeling like I’d been slapped in the face with a cricket bat. But a hot cricket bat. Covered in misery jam.

I messaged my apologies to the host of the party I was now definitely not attending. I said I wouldn’t be coming, because to do so would make me the unquestionable super-spreader in the room. Also because I couldn’t stand up for more than three minutes without feeling woozy and trying to find and excuse to lie on the floor again and find the coolest spots by rolling gently around on my side, and it wasn’t that kind of party.

While my beloved and Doozer went out to fulfil other social obligations, I slept, fitfully, through several terrible Hallmark holiday movies. I can’t say exactly how many, because, as previously discussed, they are all just the same one  on an endless cycle anyway. I sweated, I shivered, I flitted in and out of consciousness, I shifted uncomfortably, I sweated more, I shivered more, I … somehow in my feverish haze ordered a hawaiian pizza, received and ate at least a slice of it before realising that no, I definitely wasn’t hungry, and putting it in the fridge.

The next two days passed similarly, albeit with fewer hawaiian pizzas. Or rather with the same one, but drawn out, and less attractive by the day.

I crawled out of bed, made honking noises with my mouth when I opened it to get words out, poked at things miserably, tested daily to check I still didn’t have the cov, and crawled back up to bed every two or three hours to sleep, or toss and turn and try to sleep while apparently swallowing invisible razor blades. The glands in my neck, which are very protective and I’m ever so grateful for them, swelled to the size of grapefruit, trying to fight off the lurgy. Swelled so vigorously and so ardently that I could hear my heart throbbing through them in a constant “whoom, whoom, whoom” in my ouchy ears. My head ached and eyes ached to the point where putting reading glasses on was pointedly painful and thus I couldn’t even occupy myself by texting people to tell them how much sympathy they should be giving me, which was terrible. I had to pick up the slack and feel extra sorry for myself instead. Luckily, I am British, so very good at that.

And days passed. Two, three, four. On the fourth I began to come back, got some part of my brain working again. Sadly it was the part that noticed what a mess the house was in, and also remembered where I’d put all the stocking stuffers that I hadn’t thought about two nights before when they were needed. So if Doozer is reading this, yes, that’s why you spent the early part of 2023 getting ridiculous small gifts for achievements like “Did a Tuesday“.

And now I’m writing this at 3.30am the morning of the fifth day. There’s a storm raging outside, which led to some sort of urgent BEEP! BEEP!!!!! from one of the sensors in the house at 2, which woke us all up, but only happened the once, so everyone just lay there waiting until they… well, the other two humans, slipped back into sleep.

But me, no. The cat is going through another of her phases of bopping me on the nose every time she wants petting, which is often, security lights on the outside of houses around kept being switched on by the wind and flickering for a little behind the lids I was trying to keep shut, before disappearing for a second… or two… and then another gust lit something up. Snoring was happening, the garbage trucks are picking up outside.

And my flu, my cold, my illness, my not-TTSNBN (tests said!), has gone into its productive phase. This is from the notes app that I wrote in bed before finally giving up, getting up and coming downstairs.

“It’s now being productive. Or destructive, if you’re a rainforest, or my sleep. The sad mountain of tissues is growing almost as fast as the minutes of night disappear. But at least it’s in its Productive Phase. We love a Productive Phase.

My mother always used to sound weirdly proud and impressed when colds we had entered the really gross part. “Oh yes!” She’d say, admiringly, “ever so productive!”.

I mean I understood as a bunch of super-Protestants our value was entirely wrapped up in being productive members of society, but I honestly did not imagine this was what they meant.

Now, trying to please, different parts of my face are now taking it in turns to show who can be be most productive, like they’re vying for Nostril of the Week or something.

Looks like at this point, Steve is ahead. Well done, Steve the nostril. Can you tell us how it feels to win out as Nostril of the Week once more, beating your coworker on the left Angela the Nostril? Feels great does it? Wonderful. Now tell the people at home, what is it you’ve actually PRODUCED in this highly productive time? … Oh. Oh it’s that is it? Well that’s very … viscous. Yes, you have used a lot of paper, well done.”

At which point I realised I wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon and came down to type instead. And now I’m sitting/lying on the sofa, trying to do that thing people do where they’re all like “Oh, can’t sleep lying down? Sleep sitting up!” like I’m some kind of bat gone wrong, or a lazy vampire. My nose has stopped, to be fair, exploding every few minutes and is now just settling into a weird creaking and popping, like an iceberg waiting to collapse. And soon

…

Shit. The weird BEEP! Has just BEEP!!!ed again. I should go and check whether it’s woken everyone again. Probably something to do with brief power outages and the storm, or the moisture combined with some house system we haven’t checked or… or perhaps it’s just some kind of cosmic alarm telling me to stop the fuck typing and try and get some sleep. Yes. Let’s say it’s that.

Honk.
Cough.
Snurt.
[Slides off the sofa, unfurls onto the floor, and rolls off sideways into the darkened house]