For the second time in what seems like far too short a period of time, Britain has dissolved into snow-induced chaos. And this affects the student population far more significantly, because of some households' absolute insistence to not use their heating unless 'absolutely necessary'. The fact that temperatures got down to -4 in Devon last night does indicate to me the need for warmth.
For the past couple of days, for instance, I have been extremely ill. I have a running nose, a sore throat, chest pains, ear ache, hacking cough and an aching body. Every few minutes I get a surge of light-headedness: all the ingredients needed to make a convincing Lemsip commercial. Most would assume this affliction to be something along the lines of a winter cold. But naturally, because it is me, and because I despise being ill with a passion so intense you could set it on fire, it wasn't a winter bug at all, but something equivalent to leprosy. In fact, what I've had has actually been bird flu of the leprosy variety, with a light dusting of hyperglycaemia. Had I actually bothered to go to the GP, I would have had my own assertion confirmed: that I was the illest person in the world who wasn't actually dead.
To make matters worse, a cruel Siberian wind has been plaguing this merry isle for the best part of two weeks now. Whilst this was entertaining for about, oh, five minutes, travelling 'up north' to Wales was quite a shock to my life support system. The temperature reading "-17 degrees Celsius" just didn't really register accordingly with my brain, although I was happy to have my feet encased in Ugg boot all weekend. However, I maintain that the Ugg boot turns into the most treacherous footwear available, when confronted with the icy, ungritted streets of Cardiff. They basically act as shortened skis, only about five times more slippery. It resulted in several near misses involving my bottom and icy pavement only too many times.
Naturally, the media-induced panic surrounding the weather and its natural inclination to turn cold at this time of year, has everyone behaving like lemmings. Police are advising motorists to stay at home unless their journey was absolutely necessary. Well, my journey into town today was very necessary, because I needed Weetabix. It also only involved sliding down the stairs outside my apartment block - very ungracefully might I add - complete with the thermal equivalent of a neck brace around my neck.
And as I sit here now, admittedly on the road to recovery, but still shivering and tense with a slight headache and cough, my woefully ignorant of all things medical-self can't help wondering why there is still no cure for something as simple as the common cold.
So low is my faith in the prospect of those scientists ever finding a cure, I am beginning to wonder if the sort of researchers who might have been engaged in defeating the cold are now being swallowed up by the far more exciting and glamorous green movement. Imagine, the very men who might have developed a cure for millions of peoples' seasonal sufferings are, as I write, sitting on an ice floe off the coast of Canada spying on bloody polar bears and logging fish egg production.
Or perhaps he was thinking about taking up medical research, but thought rather than spend his life in a chilly lab in Cardiff with nothing but a pot of viruses for company, he'd be better paid and happier if he went instead to Soho to be an ad-man for Lemsip.
Whatever has happened, the illness only seems to creep up upon us all once the temperatures plummet. I was sat on a bench by Exeter Cathedral in mid-October, in something akin to a summer dress. Within a matter of weeks, I'm holed up in my (mercifully) well-insulted flat, enraged by the fact that it takes me an extra five minutes to leave the house each day: five minutes dedicated entirely to layering up, against both the cold and alternate means of viral infection, that are yet to be cured. Marvellous.
