They say 'write what you know,' and right now I know what my lungs taste like.

It's cold and flu season, folks, and it seems I've won season tickets. For a solid couple of weeks now I've woken up each morning (or, eventually, afternoon) only under duress; I cough myself awake, check tentatively to see which extremities ache ('all of them' is usually a safe bet) and begin inventing Rube Goldberg machines in my head that could procure me some orange juice without me having to get up.

So, clearly, I'm as productive a member of society as ever, and this productivity is precisely why I've barely left the house for the past couple of weeks. I definitely brought enough for the whole class, but that doesn't mean it would be a good idea to share.

Now, there are those around me who defaulted immediately to the old blame-the-victim routine and attempted to pin responsibility on me, just because my entire diet in February was chocolate and beer or just because I haven't actually eaten an orange since Christmas. But this approach to problem-solving is folly, and I won't listen to it - partially because I'm entirely too stubborn to admit personal culpability, and partially because I can't really hear anything that well anymore through the constant headache and the sound of my own throat rebelling every 30 seconds.

No, my approach to alleviating my condition is a far more manly and honourable one: I'm going to curl up like a baby and sleep until I feel better, and then once I'm fully healed I'm going to go out and punch everything I could conceivably blame my troubles on.

Do I have that 'bird flu' I've been hearing about? I'll have to punch a bird next time I go outside, just in case. Maybe those years I spent in Wolseley as a kid left me with Dutch elm disease; clearly I must punch down a tree, just to show those trees what's what. Supposing it's West Nile? In any given year I'm personally responsible for the deaths of countless hundreds of mosquitoes, so revenge on them won't really be anything new.

What if the environmentalists poisoned me? Don't give me that look, it's a perfectly reasonable explanation. They saw me driving a car one day and declared amongst themselves that my personal carbon footprint is too large; now I lie bedridden and my carbon footprint has diminished almost to nothingness. Well, they won't beat me that easily! When I'm punching trees I'll be sure to punch them extra hard, just because I know how much environmentalists love trees.

It might be the feverish delirium talking, but just thinking about punching stuff is making me feel better already. If you should find yourself ill this spring, just follow my lead: drink entire litres of juice at a time, sleep entire days of your life away, and compile a long mental list of potential punching bags.

You'll be glad you did.

James Howard can down a one-litre carton of orange juice in the time it takes you to read this sentence.
Read more at: slurpeesandmurder.blogspot.com.