Monday, 7 September 2009

Displacement Activity? Certainly Not!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am quite partial to a spot of displacement activity from time to time.

Sometimes my DA has a purpose, for example getting slightly side-tracked while engaged in work-related research.

But there are also times when, quite frankly, it is out-and-out time wasting.

I don't usually regard completing online surveys as pure DA. After all, this year alone I have 'earned' £35 in Argos vouchers, £5 in M&S vouchers and cash amounting to somewhere in the region of £25.

Not a great fortune, but for just a few minutes at a time, doing an online questionnaire, or giving my opinion on everything from the recession to all-in-one shampoo and conditioners, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

In fact it's money for old rope.

Mostly they're rather formulaic and follow the same tried and tested ways of canvassing opinion.

Mostly.

However, yesterday I had one for cough medicine.

It started off OK. Have you had a cough in the last year? What sort of cough was it (multiple choice - chesty, tickly, thick mucousy etc?

So far so fairly uninteresting.

Until I got to this question, which had me practically falling off my chair laughing......

"If you were to try to put a figure on how much a thick, mucus cough weighs you down, how much extra weight would you say a particularly mucus cough feels like?"

  • 1 pound equivalent to a bag of sugar
  • 3 pounds equivalent to an average pillow
  • More than 5 pounds equivalent to a small dog
  • Don't know
Who would have thought that the average pillow weighs 3 pounds? And is it really an appropriate example of how heavy a particularly mucus cough feels like. Surely the weight of a leather football or similar item would be easier to imagine.

Anyway, I digress.

I do know EXACTLY what it feels like to have a small dog lying on my chest as she does it most nights when I'm trying to read in bed. And I can say with some certainty that if you have a cough which makes you feel like that you should head for A&E without delay.