Writer’s Block No 2.

Yip. I still have it. I have ‘written’ countless, brilliant blogs in my mind but they just don’t get onto paper. But there are 2 things I want to mention.

Winter Blues:

For the last 3 weeks or so I have been coughing, hacking, blowing my nose, sucking sweets that promise to soothe my sore throat and watched in horror as my nose changed colour to bright red and increased somewhat in size.

It all started when I sat in a tiny office next to my boss and new client. My boss looked like a wet chicken and all I could think of for the duration of the meeting was ‘please don’t exhale’. He was quite sick. Next morning I woke to a sore throat which I promptly labeled psychosomatic and off I went to work. By mid-day I couldn’t swallow and my nose was blocked up; a couple of days later it settled in my chest and I nearly coughed my lungs out – many times.

A lot of people asked me if I had the flu. ‘No’ said I,’ I have an upper respiratory tract infection’.

You know if you have flu : you cant get out of bed and you feel like you might die. You need/want people to bring you soup, orange juice, water, asprin and cough mixture. You need tea and to be left alone to sleep it off because that is all you can do. You have a temperature, your bones and muscles ache, you sweat like crazy or feel you might freeze to death; in other words you feel like absolute hell. Note: Stay in bed if this is you – you don’t want to spread it around and you will get better much quicker if you pamper yourself a bit.

But if you have what I had you can still function albeit the brain, well my one anyway, is bit addled from all the cough mixture. You just don’t feel quite that bad that you should go to bed.

And just when I thought I was better (nose back to normal and the cat wasn’t annoyed because of me coughing all night) I got a dose of rhinitis…and what is that? Well, anyone who lives in Johannesburg knows that awful little itch in the nose which suddenly erupts into a steady stream of snot and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Your nose is very, very inflamed – this is not a cold, cough or ‘flu’. This is an attack on the delicate mucous membranes inside your poor little nose. This is the result of the dry, dry, very dry Highveld winter, the dust, smoke from fires and who knows what else is lurking around in our air.

Ouch – my poor (I would like to say little) nose….bottles of nose spray and boxes of extra soft tissues later have left me, once again, with a red, red nose, chapped lips and yes, my nose does look much, much bigger than usual.

Product descriptions:

The great Seth Godin once commented that he didn’t understand why the people who make cat food give the various concoctions names like (and I paraphrase): Lamb Casserole with vegetable or Roast Chicken with young potatoes. He suggests names like: Sparrow Stew or Mouse Pie…much more to a cat’s taste.

This leads me onto my Shampoo and Conditioner labels. Mine say: ‘for thin, fine and lifeless hair’ and ‘smoothes dry, rough and frizzy hair’. Jeez…can’t they be a bit nicer about it? A Body Shop body wash thing I have says: ‘lavish, opulent cleansing oil’…Now that is labeling!