[like a good book, I can't put this day back]

I've managed to get crumbs everywhere while eating ginger creams that I snaffled from Mark. Half of those crumbs are now in my mug of warm milk. I don't normally like warm milk, but I needed it for the purposes of softening the biscuits. For some reason, eating anything remotely hard is really difficult with this stupid ear ache. As is talking. And for someone like me who likes to talk, this is distressing.

Due to the pain involved when speaking, I didn't say much in my American History seminar this morning. Each time I spoke, though, I somehow ended up being slightly insolent to my seminar tutor.

Example #1: Robert asked us to think in terms of military strategy - what would Russia want the US to do to relieve the tension of Germany's invasion? My reply was "I'm sorry, my days as a military strategist are long over." It got a laugh from the class, at least.

Example #2: I asked whether the Cold War had been called so at the time, or whether it was named after the fact, or at least later into it. Robert didn't know - "I'm not a Soviet Union historian" was his excuse. "Maybe you should be," I suggested. At the end of the seminar, he announced he was going to go and retrain as a Russian historian.

Example #3: Robert was briefly running through events, and mentioned D-Day as being in July 1944. "June", I corrected him. He looked at me. "It was in June," I repeated, "June the sixth." He conceded that I was right. Which I was.

How long does it take for ibuprofen (or, in my case, some fake version known as cuprofen) to kick in?