woe is me

I'm feeling sorry for myself, I've had a rotten cold for over a week now.

It started last Monday (after Simon ha finished with it) with a sore throat that gradually got so bad during the week that I couldn't drink a first cup of tea in the morning before taking painkillers...

Anyway the sore throat went (think I killed it off with an excess of wine on Saturday night at Sam's party) only to be replaced by snot & catarrgh, in copious quantities.
My brother says I should still be able to run if the cold is just in my head (which it is) however most of the time my brain feels like its only loosely attached within my skull so I don't think running is a good idea (my brother is a bit of an exercise nazi as will become clear this coming sunday)

Managed my step class this morning, well, maybe managed isn't quite the word, I was there. Petra, the teacher has a really bad habit of making the class too dance-y, and things got a bit too twizzle-y for my loosely attached brain, if I'd kept on I'd have fallen over with dizziness.

Although I was clearly the lucky one as someone had a heart attack outside of the class!
Our step class is held in the 'alter bahnhof' (old train station) and trains come and go regularly outside, the passengers get a few minutes to watch a group of crazy women stepping up and down and turning around, while the train is stopped. Today a train stopped and stayed stopped. People got off and made frantic phonecalls (probably along the lines of 'come and get me, I'm stranded in the middle of nowhere') and then in the reflections in the windows I saw an ambulance (or could have been a fire engine, you can't be sure here, as you call for either and you tend to get both...go figure)
We carried on the class until Petra in the end let curiosity get the better of her (true blooded German behaviour) and leaning out of the window asked what had happened...turns out someone had had a heart attack on the train, and later as we were getting into the car post torture session, we could see a group of paramedics gathered around someone in the carriage and chest compressions being administered, drama in Kettwig!

So at least I only have the cold from hell & don't need the paramedics.

I always wonder with a cold what is the deciding factor in its duration? Is there a specific quantity of snot that must be produced? If I blow more will I get rid of it faster? And why is snot green/yellow? Such an undesirable colour!

At least it's not swine flu, no temperature thankfully, at the end of the day it is just a cold, making me use up vast quantities of Kleenex Balsam (the only tisue I will allow near my much abused nostils, otherwise I just know that I will end up with a bright red and scaley nose once the cold has been beaten into submission) and making me even more short tempered than usual but also inclined to treat myself.

I believe in the motto 'starve a fever, feed a cold', so I've fed it well (afterall, as I mentioned, no temperature!!) it's had peanut m&ms, cake, biscuits, big bens (which are Germany's equivalent to m&ms) more cake, more biscuits...it takes a lot of energy blowing your nose every few minutes!