I’VE been feeling terribly tweezer-lipped lately. To say I’ve been having a sense of humour failure is to massively understate the length of my lower lip, which has been practically dragging on the ground.
Trouble is, the events that are knocking all the usual optimism out of me – home “improvement” problems – are beyond my control and threaten to drag on for weeks and weeks to come.
Luckily, they’re not life-threatening – as the beloved keeps telling me – and the situation’s not permanent, either (or so I’m told, but at this stage I’d argue the point).
It is, however, making me feel so trembly that right now I couldn’t even be trusted with a full cup of tea; fortunately, I’m avoiding that genteel beverage at the moment. And in the absence of my former go-to drug, nicotine – banished from my life about a year ago – I’m mainlining mocha. In fact, if it was tested, you’d probably find my blood type’s currently coffee.
So much has gone upsettingly wrong with our renovations; in fact, as I write, the kitchen cupboards are being scraped off and repainted for the THIRD time. And that’s the easiest of all the jobs that have gone pear-shaped, ranging from uneven floor tiles to different height windows – not to mention holes in the wall, gaps in the new bit of ceiling and countless other catastrophes (described as “little problems” by the beloved, although I think that’s just his misguided attempt to calm me down).
Outside, the back garden – covered in rubble for weeks – looks like a builder’s yard, the granny flat’s plastered patches await some urgent cosmetic treatment, and its insides still need major surgery.
On top of all of that, thousands of rands and several weeks after the roof was fixed, we had four worrying leaks in the last heavy rain (guaranteed not to happen again after further work, promises our contractor…).
Now, of course, the situation’s compounded by my own spiraling gloom, which is probably what’s making me feel so ill.
You’ve heard of the placebo effect, when people who think they’re taking drugs get better even though they’re unknowingly swallowing “sugar” pills? Well, the sickness I’m feeling is the “nocebo” effect, reckons an article in The New Yorker.
The nocebo is apparently the placebo’s malevolent Mr Hyde opposite.
It not only causes people who are given placebos and then warned of the “drug’s” side-effects to really experience the scary symptoms, it can also negatively affect people who are simply expecting the worst, which is exactly what’s happening to me right now – unrelenting daily headaches included!
Quite apart from all that, I really miss laughing – which I don’t seem to have done for a month. It’s something I was very good at, and it was very good for me, too.
As my favourite King James version of the Bible points out in Proverbs: “A merry heart doeth good like medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones”!
Or, as Reader’s Digest, that former favourite of maiden aunts and lavatory literature lovers everywhere would have it: laughter is the best medicine.
The best medicine
Trouble is, the events that are knocking all the usual optimism out of me – home “improvement” problems – are beyond my control and threaten to drag on for weeks and weeks to come.
Luckily, they’re not life-threatening – as the beloved keeps telling me – and the situation’s not permanent, either (or so I’m told, but at this stage I’d argue the point).
It is, however, making me feel so trembly that right now I couldn’t even be trusted with a full cup of tea; fortunately, I’m avoiding that genteel beverage at the moment. And in the absence of my former go-to drug, nicotine – banished from my life about a year ago – I’m mainlining mocha. In fact, if it was tested, you’d probably find my blood type’s currently coffee.
So much has gone upsettingly wrong with our renovations; in fact, as I write, the kitchen cupboards are being scraped off and repainted for the THIRD time. And that’s the easiest of all the jobs that have gone pear-shaped, ranging from uneven floor tiles to different height windows – not to mention holes in the wall, gaps in the new bit of ceiling and countless other catastrophes (described as “little problems” by the beloved, although I think that’s just his misguided attempt to calm me down).
Outside, the back garden – covered in rubble for weeks – looks like a builder’s yard, the granny flat’s plastered patches await some urgent cosmetic treatment, and its insides still need major surgery.
On top of all of that, thousands of rands and several weeks after the roof was fixed, we had four worrying leaks in the last heavy rain (guaranteed not to happen again after further work, promises our contractor…).
Now, of course, the situation’s compounded by my own spiraling gloom, which is probably what’s making me feel so ill.
You’ve heard of the placebo effect, when people who think they’re taking drugs get better even though they’re unknowingly swallowing “sugar” pills? Well, the sickness I’m feeling is the “nocebo” effect, reckons an article in The New Yorker.
The nocebo is apparently the placebo’s malevolent Mr Hyde opposite.
It not only causes people who are given placebos and then warned of the “drug’s” side-effects to really experience the scary symptoms, it can also negatively affect people who are simply expecting the worst, which is exactly what’s happening to me right now – unrelenting daily headaches included!
Quite apart from all that, I really miss laughing – which I don’t seem to have done for a month. It’s something I was very good at, and it was very good for me, too.
As my favourite King James version of the Bible points out in Proverbs: “A merry heart doeth good like medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones”!
Or, as Reader’s Digest, that former favourite of maiden aunts and lavatory literature lovers everywhere would have it: laughter is the best medicine.
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