Typing into the computer at work to make is sound like you’re working is a very dishonest thing to do. But I bet thousands of people do it every day. Just think of all the nonsense written into computers in the name of ‘pretending to work’. For example this whole paragraph is such text, there is a woman on the phone on the desk opposite me, whom I’m hoping my typing makes her think I’m doing some very hard and important work. I’m not though, I’m so tired I just want to go to sleep! I might draw eyes on my eyelids and have a kip. Under my desk would make for a lovely cosy den if I had a duvet, I would warrant I could get away with it too, no one comes into my section of this room. Though saying that if I did want to sleep the constant sleep farts I suffer from would no doubt give me away. Whilst asleep I often sing the ‘Hello mutha, hello fadder’ song too.
When I say I’m a work, I mean I am sat in our living room, at the writing desk while Cecil is lying on the sofa, writhing this way and that because he is poorly. I want him to think I’m doing work because he’s asked me to write him a story to help him get to sleep. While mum is on the phone talking to her sister, not technically at a desk, she’s sat on the foot rest, it looks like it might buckle under her weight at any moment. I would love to video that at high speed so I could slow it down and see the look on her shocked face as she fell! She’d hate that, you can’t mock her if she does something wrong, god help you if you laugh at her failing! Or falling!
But poor Cecil, he is poorly. He’s got tonsillitis an affliction which I myself am just about recovered from. It’s been round the Thax house hold like a demented throat demon bent on causing agony the inner mouths of every Thax alive.
If you have never had tonsillitis, let me explain the horrors one is subjected to during this horrific illness. Firstly you have a slightly sore throat, nothing too bad, you shrug it off “Oh I’ll just drink a honey lemoney beverage, that will sooth my boo boo”. One delicious drinky later and all is fine. For half an hour. Then the ache is back. 24 hours later the throat is raw, sore and red as road kill. This is the point at which you should run to the doctors and beg for medicines! Because as I found out, waiting to see if it improves on its own will not do you any favours!
My throat got bad, and by bad I don’t mean “ohh that’s a bit sore, I better have an aspirin” I mean “AAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHH my throat was raped in the night by a monster with razor wire for a penis!” it got bad late on a Friday night, and my doctors don’t work weekends. So I had to endure the horrors over Saturday and Sunday. By the time Saturday morning had come, my throat was riddled with ulcers. Swallowing was about as pleasant as running a red hot poker over my nipples, and so because it hurt so very much to swallow, my body decided to produce copious amounts of saliva to help increase my agony. My own aural cavity had turned against me, it was war. Biological war! My weapons of choice were hot Lemsip’s and lozenges. The Lemsips helped for several minutes, slightly elevating the pain. The lozenges may as well have been taken as a suppository for all the good they did! To combat any attempts to cure myself, my body decided to use throat to body missiles which once impacted caused a fever. And not a saucy Saturday night kind of dance fever, no, more a dripping with sweat, incapable of sleep fever. And when I did sleep, the dreams were both frantic and horrific in nature.
By late Saturday night I was in agony. My little throat boo boo was now a kin to a nuclear waste ground. The charred remains of my uvula dangled helplessly in the burnt foul smelling breeze. My tonsils, little more than fleshy lumps of ulcerated matter and my throat, a swollen throbbing tube of agony. It was time to break out the big guns! Some ultra chloraseptic throat spray was bought. This claimed to numb pain in seconds! So I sprayed it all on my throat, hoping it would act be as effective as napalm in the 60’s and decimate any agony I felt!
It worked! My whole throat was numb! It felt very odd, very swollen but numb! Thoughts shot through my head, until this point I hadn’t eaten any solid food since Friday morning. In my fever I began to imagine and hallucinate a feast! Roast mutton, a whole hog, a goose as big as a boy, tables of cake, buckets of crisps, a bath full of twigglets, troughs over flowing with melted chocolate and hats bursting with cheeses. I rushed into the kitchen and made marmite on toast, then began to eat it!
That was a mistake!
Upon the delicious salty yeast extract coming into contact with my many ulcers, the pain returned and returned 10 fold! I may as well have been gargling with shattered light bulbs, that’s certainly how my body interpreted the sensation of marmite on ulcers. What possible benefit is there in being able to feel such horrific pain in your throat? Yes I can understand it on any external part of your body, pains the bodies way of telling you that something’s bad or damaged and needs attention. But there was nothing I could do about this, I was aware it was poorly, making it utter agony didn’t help the situation at all.
Sunday came and went, I spent most of the day in bed or at my computer, sweating and not swallowing. I must have been ill because I remember just lying on the sofa watching mums loose woman that she’d taped. Though technically she hadn’t taped it, but I don’t know what it’s called when you record things on these modern non VCR machines. Then late on Sunday night, just as I thought this couldn’t get much worse, my body decided to throw a little agony spanner in the works. In the form of a cough. So now, not only was I dripping with sweat, my throat was in terrible pain and I felt dreadful, now I had a cough to deal with. As you can imagine this took me into new realms of pain, every time I coughed it would sound like “couhhhghh AGGH uuughnn UUUGH” cough followed by whimper of pain followed by cough followed by whimper.
Finally Monday morn came, and I was up at the crack of dawn, mostly because I was bursting for a wee wee. The other deeply unpleasant symptom of it was my mouth and throatal zones were constantly dry, arid, like a camels anus in the height of summer, so I would have to drink a bath’s worth of water every hour. Thus meaning I was going for a widdle constantly. Which was deeply inconvenient at half past three at night, now I know how my father feels, what with his walnut size wee pouch!
Finally a doctor’s appointment was made, and several short hours later penicillin was prescribed. But my agony didn’t end there, both Monday and Tuesday were filled with terrific pains, coughs and spazams. Then finally by Wednesday, the gaping hell holes had sealed, the agony was now just a low painful tingle. Come Wednesday evening, I ate my first bag of crisps in a week. They tasted weird. Recovery was quite rapid from then on, and by Friday night I was back eating 15 bags of crisps an hour and loving every minute of it!
And now my father is on the sofa watching loose woman, holding his throat begging for ice cream! Well I didn’t get any ice cream so he can sod right off!
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