What? Presents? What presents?

And yet again a small bit of eternity seems to have happened since the last time I wrote. Where does all this time come from, where does it disappear off to, and will I ever learn? And it’s not that I haven’t spent enough time in front of the computer or that I didn’t have time to spare. I have been doing precious little these past few days apart from coughing, sleeping and studying (in decreasing order). That little niggle I had, tickling the back of my throat last week has turned out just about as bad as it could have. I went to a doctor’s on Tuesday, and since I had a cough, he gave me cough treatment. So far so good. But he didn’t know me and my history. So it just got worse and worse. I think I reached the lowest of the low on Friday. The plan had been to get a train at about 2:30pm, then someone would pick me up and drive me to our usual doctor so he could pump me up with medicine and make me get better. Which he did eventually. But Friday lunchtime as I sat on my backpack in the freezing, draughty railway station in Clermont-Ferrand, fighting to keep my lungs inside my chest, all trains canceled because of an unexplained, unannounced strike, I felt I would never get there. In the end, my lovely dad came all the way from home to pick me up. At least he had no difficulties in finding me despite the station being so crowded: not only could he hear me a mile off, but people were giving me a wide berth. And apparently they were right: Docteur Pascal told me later on I was highly contagious… I hope I haven’t contaminated too many people (apart from my cousin Celia in England apparently – though how my germs reached her from my library all the way to her bay window desk in the north of England, I haven’t the faintest idea.)

But let’s talk about something else. I have literally spent the last week and a half thinking, talking, worrying almost exclusively about this and I DON’T LIKE IT! I am getting better though, thanks to a lot of cortizone, so maybe it’s time I changed the subject and wrote about something else that I’ve had to postpone so far… like Christmas presents! As you may have read in my “Books” post, I already have a couple of ideas for my own presents list (Maybe someone will have noticed?). However, being a very naughty, self-centered selfish girl, I have not yet even started on buying presents for other people! Oooops… It’s all the weirder since normally, I love buying presents for my friends and family (maybe partly because it means I can afford it). Normally I start looking out for stuff around mid-October, and I go through a series of ideas for each and every single person on my list until I have settled on what I believe is the best possible pressie. Well this year I suppose I’ll just have to follow my first intuition. I already have a couple of ideas. Of course I won’t write them here though. It is highly unlikely that anyone concerned by this Christmas’ present-making will ever read my blog, but why take the chance?

So it would seem I am going to have to be organized and effective… *crestfallen sigh*… This is so not me. I love wandering more or less aimlessly about town before Christmas, searching for ideas and criticizing the festive/extravagant/rubbish festive window setups, all lit up and tinsel-strung. But I have to admit, what the weird contradictory little person in me loves most of all is walking around the cold darkening streets, just waiting for all the illuminations to light up. And just when your nose starts to feel like it’s  about to fall off, stepping into a clothes-store and getting hot air blasted into your face by the gigantic automatic blowers they sometimes have right behind the door. Or walking into a chocolaterie, knowing full well everything in there is far to expensive, but taking all the time in the world to browse and look at every single one of those amazing chocolate/orange/nut/gold/caramel/roast/melting/spectacular/crunchy/round/square/star-shaped/dark/white/milky/bitter/sweet pieces of edible wonder, and maybe buying just the one truffle for yourself. (But shhhhh… don’t tell anyone about it!)

I must write a post entirely about chocolate…

Write a post about how much you like winter and catch a cold. Typical.

hopefully the cure to my cold...

Now, I have to admit. I got a little carried away on Tuesday. The first glimpse of snow always makes me go a wee bit mad. But I slipped on a patch of ice this morning on my way to Uni, fell on my backside and saw the light. What was I thinking? Winter is cold. Winter is wet. Winter is the time when every single person in the hemisphere gets a runny nose, accidents multiply, and the weather becomes so bad it precedes murders, wars and disasters on the evening news. And yet it’s sooooo pretty!

Actually I would probably still be enjoying it if it wasn’t for a bad cold and all the germs I have been carrying around since the weekend. I normally fly over the ice and skid around joyously. I love snowball fights and making snow-angels and snowmen. A couple of years ago I slid on a sledge and it was heaven. But it will probably be the death of me in the end. I am a natural-born germ catcher and I don’t tend to do things by half. When I get a cold, it usually degenerates to the point I end up feeding exclusively off cough medicine and breathing in puffs from various inhalers for weeks on end. I HATE it!

I think what caused it this time was going holly-picking last weekend. I was wearing a woolly hat, a thick jumper with a high collar, a scarf, mittens, a coat, two pairs of socks and wellingtons (along with the usual assortment of ordinary clothes, underwear etc)…. Retrospectively I must have looked a bit like the michelin man; with all those layers it’s even a wonder I could lift my arms above my head to reach the branches. But still I got the sniffles. Had I known, I wouldn’t have bothered; it wasn’t even that cold. And since I’ve come back to Clermont, I’ve been trying to do some damage control. But it may have been too late. I’m on the threshold of descending through the seven circles of my usual hypochondriac hell. Even as I sit here wrapped up in a warm fleecy blanket in front of a chick flick drinking herbal tea laced with something called “fervex” (to take care of the runny nose and headache) I wonder about this itch at the back of my throat… Should I not resist the urge and cough? Or shall I give in to paranoia: will that one little cough be the camel back-breaking straw which will irritate my throat to the verge of bronchitis?

(Ironically as I am writing this Cameron Diaz is sprinting towards Jude Law across snow-covered fields with a very deep V-neck and a proportionately very small scarf. I hope she gets a cold) Anyway, a bit of honey in the already weird-tasting mixture should help with the tickly throat. After that, straight to bed. Night-o.