CROAKY
I feel like I've swallowed a pint of porcupine followed by a cactus-chaser while lying, throat first, on a bed of nails.
Nothing I've taken seems to work. It's affecting my sleep, my state of mind and my social life: one friend didn't want me to pop over this evening in case I was contagious.
I wouldn't mind so much except for the fact that I seem to have been given just two day's breathing space in between ridding myself of one cold and succumbing to a second. Surely that's not fair?
At least I didn't have to go to work today. Not that I have much to show for it - a few calls here, blinds delivered there, a few dollars lost at online poker there. I failed to add a single sentence to my work-in-progress. And I didn't get round to reading a single chapter of the Hemingway novel I've started (in a doomed attempt to improve my own writing).
I did, however, manage to raise the temperature in my living room by successfully bleeding my bleeding radiator, with which I have a testy relationship.
The first time I tried to tame the metallic beast I came off worse. In a bid to smooth the passage of the super-heated water within, I inserted the radiator key into the side and loosened the screw. The reassuring gurgle of hot air escaping was followed by an altogether more alarming jet of aforementioned water. The screw fell onto the floor, and water began trickling down my side wall and into the flat below. With one toweled hand attempting to stymie the flow of water and the other on the phone, I called my plumber.
"Tighten the nipple," he told me.
"The what?"
"The nipple - the screw you undid on the side of the radiator."
"It's not there," I replied, the panic in my voice growing.
"So turn off the water supply."
I left the nipple-less hole, took out a pair of pliers and turned off the water. Disaster averted.
Never before in my flat had one nipple caused so much mayhem. Nor would it ever do so again. At the age of 30, I'm now too experienced in the devious ways of the radiator nipple to allow myself to come unstuck again.
I feel like I've swallowed a pint of porcupine followed by a cactus-chaser while lying, throat first, on a bed of nails.
Nothing I've taken seems to work. It's affecting my sleep, my state of mind and my social life: one friend didn't want me to pop over this evening in case I was contagious.
I wouldn't mind so much except for the fact that I seem to have been given just two day's breathing space in between ridding myself of one cold and succumbing to a second. Surely that's not fair?
At least I didn't have to go to work today. Not that I have much to show for it - a few calls here, blinds delivered there, a few dollars lost at online poker there. I failed to add a single sentence to my work-in-progress. And I didn't get round to reading a single chapter of the Hemingway novel I've started (in a doomed attempt to improve my own writing).
I did, however, manage to raise the temperature in my living room by successfully bleeding my bleeding radiator, with which I have a testy relationship.
The first time I tried to tame the metallic beast I came off worse. In a bid to smooth the passage of the super-heated water within, I inserted the radiator key into the side and loosened the screw. The reassuring gurgle of hot air escaping was followed by an altogether more alarming jet of aforementioned water. The screw fell onto the floor, and water began trickling down my side wall and into the flat below. With one toweled hand attempting to stymie the flow of water and the other on the phone, I called my plumber.
"Tighten the nipple," he told me.
"The what?"
"The nipple - the screw you undid on the side of the radiator."
"It's not there," I replied, the panic in my voice growing.
"So turn off the water supply."
I left the nipple-less hole, took out a pair of pliers and turned off the water. Disaster averted.
Never before in my flat had one nipple caused so much mayhem. Nor would it ever do so again. At the age of 30, I'm now too experienced in the devious ways of the radiator nipple to allow myself to come unstuck again.
posted by David Cohen at 10:59 pm
2 Comments:
Oh, you really should'nt read Hemingway if you are attempting to stall the clock. Nothing ages a writer faster than the realization that you will never produce anything remotely close to what you just read. Again: depression, my friend, will age you faster than celebacy. Or so I've heard...not that I have either of those problems. (everything Angela says is a lie)
You have a point. I have to say that i get that feeling more when reading Louis de Bernieres than Hemingway. Incidentally, many people used to say I looked like Agent Mulder, though they haven't done so for a few years now. I sense a conspiracy.
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