Eating Rocks, Drinking Sulphur, Drooling

I am currently suffering from some lurgy (cause unknown but definitely not the dreaded C19) which has caused my lips to swell and crack, my mouth to ulcerate, my tongue to develop the sensitivity of a paranoid narcissist and my brain to quietly crumble. And what’s most annoying about this is that it makes eating and drinking very hard. Normally when I’m ill and can’t do much I look forward to meals and cups of tea; not this time. For the last few days I’ve eaten hardly anything and I woke up today dreaming of boiled egg and soldiers. A nice soft-boiled egg couldn’t do any harm, could it? Well no, but my mistake was in toasting the bread. The result was coarse brown fingers with the consistency of granite covered in sandpaper, which the softness of the egg did little to mitigate. As for drinking, since swallowing is hard and since I can barely open my mouth without covering the entire area in saliva, it is not pleasurable. Not to mention that any liquids hotter than tepid taste like boiling sulphur. It is not fun. As diets go, this is the most unpleasant one I’ve done in a long time.

I don’t want to put you off whatever liquids or solids you might be ingesting, but for some reason this particular virus has seen fit to, as you might say, demoralise the muscles of my mouth. My lips have not only swollen but lost all capacity to contain liquids and drool continually escapes from the corners of my mouth. Sorry, that’s probably too much information but I just had to offload.

Apart from all that I’m not feeling too bad. Taking it easy today: I’ve just ordered Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m no Longer Talking to White People about Race and Q and A, the book on which Slumdog Millionaire is based. It’s currently being serialised on Radio 4.

Happy Tuesday

And before you ask – no, I haven’t had a test but I am certain it’s not C19 as I have none of the major symptoms.

Kirk out