Nasty combinations

One. A lingering cough with a bruised rib after skidding off my bike at the weekend (on the bike path, just changing direction too quickly over wet leaves). Everytime I sneeze I yelp in surprise; everytime I cough I groan.

Two. Renato the dentist's scrupulous cleaning of my teeth with a windy day and a blocked nose. Riding the streets of Melbourne with the wind whistling through my scraped gums a mild kind of agony.

Three. The University's impossible demands of our essay marking: a tightly regulated bell curve of grade distribution, an inflexible average, a finely tuned characterisation of the standards of each grade, combined with an insistence on including in the averages those students who never turned up to class and never bothered to withdraw. Statistical hell for my two wonderful tutors who valiantly battled to do right by the students and the system today.