tiring, to say the least

So last week I mentioned I'd come down with yet another cold.

I seem to have suffered from a succession of colds in recent months.  This is essentially a reflection of being exposed to a greater variety of people and it being cold season, but it ends up feeling like some weird pattern when there have been this many - 4 by my reckoning across the last four months.

The weirdest thing about this last one was that it followed exactly the same disease pattern as the first one I had in the sequence, which makes it feel like even more of a pattern.

Basically it first made itself felt on Friday evening with a vague sense of it being there and then across Saturday I started to get proper symptoms.  Saturday night I felt properly unwell and the evening and night were spent alternately running hot and cold and I got very little sleep.

Sunday I felt absolutely awful, partly due to the cold and partly due to the lack of sleep.  Monday I woke up and felt much better, but the more traditional cold symptoms hit with a vengeance and my nose runs like it's a leaky tap all day.

Tuesday I felt better still, but the symptoms have moved on to a dry, tickly cough, though thankfully the nose is more bunged up than runny.  Wednesday the cough is basically all gone and I just feel a bit congested, rather than properly bunged up.

Thursday, apart from a slightly croaky throat you probably wouldn't know I'd had a cold at all.  Which, as I say, was exactly the same pattern as the first cold I got in this sequence.

One of the things I'm not sure of is does this represent an improvement in my constitution?  Now that I can do things like walk up a hill without my heart wanting to explode out of my chest has that meant I'm now better able to fight things like colds and so the symptoms follow the same basic pattern for all but the nastiest/luckiest of bugs?

Or is it more that I essentially caught the same strain of cold, and it had simply mutated enough that my immune system couldn't take care of it instantly?

What made it all worse was that I had a report to do for Wednesday, so really where I should have taken Monday at the least off, I felt I couldn't.  And because it took so long to do the report I've actually done 1.5 hours extra last week, and that's with only doing short days on Thursday and Friday.  It really wasn't much fun and I've been knackered this weekend as a result.

Still, at least that means I get to do 1.5 hours less this next week!  ... except I have a dental appointment and my car is in for a service and MOT, so I'm going to spend a small fortune :(.

Anyway, in other news, the Formula 1 season gets under way next weekend with the Australian Grand Prix.  It's also the first of the double headers, with the Malaysian Grand Prix following the very next weekend.  I'm hoping these double headers work out okay for me - I'm a bit worried that two weeks on a row will pox up my timings and schedulings.

I'm not sure on that front if the BBC only showing highlights will help or hinder me.  And by that I mean TV highlights - they actually appear to be doing more on Radio than they used to, so in a weird way there may be more for me to watch/listen to each weekend than last year!

One thing I have noticed is that the TV Programme Guide listing thing for my PVR doesn't have the race listed as being on Sky Sports 1 or 2.  I don't actually have them, but you can get them via top-up TV and I was umming and erring over whether I should give it a go and it looks like I made a wise decision not too.

It does leave me wondering how the hell the sky thing is going to work - I could understand practice not being on there but if the main race and practice aren't then where are they showing them?  Sky Sports 3 & 4?  That feels like they're really being relegated to nowhere land.

Or could you only get access by subscribing to this dedicated Formula 1 channel they're doing?  Is that an additional channel you can only have if you take out a full Sky Sports subscription as well?

I can see why Bernie approved - more ways to fleece the ordinary F1 fans (and everyone else) seems to fit right in with his modus operandi!