These would be guilty pleasures, if I could even be bothered feeling guilty

A normal, healthy human adult has an average of two colds a year.

(Quickly checks back through blog for number of mentions of the word 'lemsip'.)

Crikey. Time to become a normal, healthy human adult, I should think. I wonder how you do that?

I read blogs, and I have learned that when bloggers have colds, they are little hives of industry. They sew things. They bake things. They read involved books about parenting techniques. They jump up and down and take pictures of themselves. (You all know who you are.)

This makes me feel sad, because what I do is sit on the sofa watching television and eating chocolate. Yesterday I watched around 8 recorded episodes of Frasier, and what's more, I don't feel bad about it. I don't even feel bad about occasionally fast-forwarding through scenes which did not feature Frasier's brother Nils, because David Hyde Pierce is so funny he only has to move his head slightly in order to make me giggle.

(Another thing I'm really enjoying at present is the BBC's repeats of series one of the radio comedy Bleak Expectations, a Dickens spoof which has Anthony Head in it. I love Anthony Head. I loved him as Giles in Buffy, and can do no better than to repeat the serial man-fancier Meg Wood's assertion that to gaze on his handsomeness is akin to reading a novel by Faulkner. I'm not so fussed for him in Merlin, where his job is mainly to look intolerant and cross, but in Bleak Expectations as the suave, undead, evil benefactor Gently Benevolent.... even though his nose drops off from time to time. I still would.)

I have been struggling with reading lately, having spent the last couple of weeks trying not to look at my bedside table in order to avoid the two books sitting on it. Well written, well reviewed, literary and eloquent, I just couldn't be bothered with them at all. (I still think I haven't recovered from the trauma of last year's Orange Prize shortlist.)

And, to whinge pitifully, if I'm tired, my eyes get tired. The other day I decided not to buy a copy of Madame Bovary in a charity shop because the print was too small.

I love the writer Paul Magrs' blog, whose books I've mentioned before, because of his sheer pleasure in reading - as my book group clusters worthily around Pulitzer prize-winners and Great Classic Works, he's getting excited about battered 1970s paperbacks or something with a picture of Elsie Tanner on the front. And so it was on his recommendation that I requested from the library a book from the Coffee House Mystery series (what's not to like about a website with the navigation menu "Espressos: Lattes: Muffins: Murder"?)

And when it came, it brought with it all kinds of treats. Murder; glamour; shopping; handsome cops with nice backsides; absolutely tons of coffee geekery (squee!), and the best, best thing for a tired woman with a streaming cold?

It was the large print edition.