Catching up (again)

Thought it was time to upload some more nonsense for the world and his wife to ignore. So I thought I'd publish some (hopefully) humerous poetry - see other entries for this month.

In the meantime, I had a little dalliance with the old swine flu. Not much to write about really except that it was pretty mild with not much in the way of severe symptoms. The highlight of the whole thing was a conversation I had with the "thoroughly trained" girl on the National Flu Pandemic Hotline.

I informed her that my temperature was 102 degrees.

"Wow," she said "is that in Celsius?"

I pointed out that if it was, I would by now have been cooked in my own juces and ready to be served. I don't think she understood. What's more alarming was that she had no idea what "Fahrenheit" was and had no handy chart for converting between the two systems - so I had to do it for her.

My next mistake was to admit that I had spent the previous afternoon snoozing on the setee when she asked if I had experienced any sleepiness or drowsiness. Wrong answer. This got me passed on to the emergency out of hours medical service and I then had to have the same lengthy conversation with a doctor who agreed that, she had, on reflection, been a tad over cautious.

She did however kindly give me my reference number to get some Tamiflu and even told me which chemist to visit - urging me to do it straight away to gain maximum benefit. This was on Saturday morning. She then went on to tell me that the chemist in question would not be open until Monday. This time, I think she did understand the absurdity of the last two statements (with a little help from yours truly).

Fortunately, I knew she was talking rubbish and that the chemist was currently open and my "flu buddy" kindly went and did the deed.

So, in case you're wondering, there were no side effects whatsoever from Tamiflu and within a week I felt perfectly okay again and even managed to not infect anyone else, as far as I am aware.