I am sitting at my desk nursing a splitting headache. To describe it in terms slighty more erudite and less visceral than “AAAGH GOD MMF OWWW”, I would say that it feels like my left frontal lobe is attempting to chew through my skull just above the eyebrow. I’ve never been so thankful for the invention of rolling office chairs; gliding on casters between cubicles, I avoid the pounding throb that accompanies each plodding footstep.

Even the gentle chime of my mail client, softly informing me of further nuisances freshly sluiced through the bowels of the Exchange server, sends a twinge through my head that felt, earlier this morning, like a hatpin, but now is more like a 10d nail. It doesn’t help that my occasional hacking cough, the legacy of last week’s illness, explodes into an ephemeral agony with every diaphragmic spasm.

Ow.