Achin' all over

Remember the old song? In my case it's 'shivers down my backbone, aches in my thigh bone'. I've had this on and off since the sore throat and cough started a week ago, and since then I've scarcely slept for an hour without waking up to a coughing fit. This morning, I cracked my eyes open at just short of ten a.m. (amazing, the day before I was up at 6) and all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. Aching head, vague nausea, throat full of catarrh (what a horrible word to spell! It's as bad as diarrhoea - talking of which, I once bought my dad a wonderful get well card which read: 'Sorry to hear you've got dire (crossed out), diareo (also crossed out); inside it read, 'Oh shit. Get well anyway!), and aches from head to foot, plus a feeling of utter exhaustion.

I had a full body massage yesterday and sometimes that makes me feel very relaxed, or even a bit achy, but never anything like this. I suppose it must be a virus. My methods to combat it today have included coffee, echinacia tea, shovelling up four plastic bagfuls of mouldering birdseed from beneath the feeders in the hope that physical activity might make me feel brighter and better, hauling the heavy sacks of new birdfood that have just been delivered into the spare room, cutting them open and replenishing the feeders, reading a copy of Writing Magazine from cover to cover, and forcing my brain to fill in some crossword clues. Nothing has worked, I feel too muzzy to work, there's some ghastly building work going on over the road which sounds like a dentist's drill (my bete noir) and finally I have decided that I should GO BACK TO BED!