Colds are bastards. They are miserable, pathetic, wretched little shitbags and they can just go to hell. There seems to have been an endless supply of them over the last year or so, and I, despite being the Bionic Woman’s tougher younger sister, have caught every single bloody one of them.

The symptoms are limitless. Every day brings a new, shitty experience.

The Drunken Fish Headache

The dull, stupid little headache that feels like a moody drunken fish lolling around your skull and scraping the inside with its horrible wayward fin.

The Dusty Mouth

The inside of your mouth feels like it’s made of dust, and every now and then a grain of this terrible dust trickles down your throat and makes you cough suddenly and unexpectedly and probably in someone’s face. Trying to get to sleep with this dusty mouth is utter shit. Every inhale is like a blast of dry ice on the back of your throat. It’s rubbish.

The Stoned Mole Sneezes

This is a real bastard. You’re listening intently to whatever fascinating and important thing your boss is telling you, and suddenly you feel that niggling little sting, like someone’s poured vinegar into your sinuses, and it creeps round the inside of your face and up into your eyes, and slowly but surely your eyes begin to close so that it looks like you’re trying to give your boss a very gradual but very definite evil genius glare.

And then if you’re lucky there’s a sneeze at the end of it, but a LOT of the time the sneeze never ruddy comes and you’re just left there squinting like a stoned mole holding a grudge.

The Nose of Doom

Oh, so many things can happen with the nose. It can be a perilous canal of fast-flowing liquid that you can literally NEVER STOP no matter how much you stuff it with Kleenex or socks, and that chooses to empty itself when you least expect it and when it’s most disgusting, like when you’re in the shower and you’ve suddenly got a torrent of snot all down your body, or when you wash your face and  you realise it’s not actually fresh cold water you’re rubbing into your face IT’S YOUR OWN MUCUS.

Or the nose can be a wretched blocked pipe from hell, stuffed with snot that is SO FAR UP it NEVER comes out, even if you blow until your eyes actually pop out, and you have to breathe loudly with your mouth open like the weird snotty kid at school who would stare open-mouthed at the teacher and breathe like a dying warlock.

The Bastard Schizophrenic Temperature

Hot? Cold? Who gives a shit. The common cold certainly doesn’t. It wants you to go to sleep shivering your arse off under sixteen duvets thinking you’ll never be warm again, and it wants you to wake up in the middle of the night thinking you’ve wet yourself but actually your body has just sweated out 67% of your water weight, which you’re now lying in, and it’s disGUSTing.

The ‘I’d Rather Die Than Move From This Chair’ Feeling

Yes, your body has given up on itself. Energy? You don’t need that. Not if you’re going to remain in that wilting princess pose in that chair FOREVER, which is exactly what the common cold wants you to do. Forget movement. Forget daily bodily functions. The common cold would rather you sat in that chair and soiled yourself than let you get up and walk to the bathroom. You don’t need to dress yourself properly, either. A pair of three-day-old pants and a nearby tea towel will do, because you’re certainly not opening the wardrobe and actually reaching for clothes, because the common cold won’t let you. It would rather you looked a fool.

In short, the common cold is a tosser. It’s a miserable, disgusting, putrid, revolting, relentless, vacuous wankbag and I wish it would just SOD OFF.

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• Can you avoid the common cold? (justsave.co.uk)
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• Why can’t we cure the common cold? (digitalbullpen.com)