I really must congratulate this virus which has become lodged in my corpus. Such a fine display and variety of symptoms. Such a canny sense of timing as to when to send on a fainting spell or launch an attempt to turn my lungs inside out. For not being a flu, you are a hell of a bug. At six days you are 100% longer lasting than most colds I suffer. If you make it to Sunday I am going to give you a name and I am thinking "Walter".

Later: you are doomed cold. I found the Buckleys. For those of you sadly not Canadian or, worse, not Maritime Canadian, you will not have had the joy of drinking this 1800s concoction which is still on the market and essentially is the boiled residue of a pine tree distilled down to a thick syrup with a variety of elements added which, when not in the human body or the Buckley's bottle, would warrant the calling out of the Emergency Measures Environmental Spill Team. It is like sipping Tiger Balm. It dissolves plastics and some metals on contact.