Stuffed up

I have a headcold. In the spring. In the sunshine! A curse upon you, bacterium! Or virus! Or whatever nasty little pathogen you happen to be! And a curse upon your vile handmaidens, the mucus!

I shall fight thee on all fronts with decongestants and flaming cannonballs of ascorbic acid! I shall pummel thee into submission on the battlefield under my blankets!

Well, actually, I shall not. Because I must go forth and humble myself in front of my liege lord, Sir Agent Smith. You might think, pathogenic worm, that I would send notice of my inflamed head and beg his leave to kiss his seal-ring some other time. But unfortunately, yesterday I quipped that perhaps I would be too ill to make it to the meeting. Notwithstanding the fact that I am too ill to make it to the meeting, now saying so will make me look like an infant squire whining to get out of practising putting his wooden lance through ye olde straw-stuffed sack topped with helmet. Ye know, the straw man. Ha! Witness, pathogen, that I still brim with lame-duck philosophical puns with you coursing around.

However, I find to my shame that I am a whining infant squire. No! Do not make me! The lance is too heavy! The sun is in my eyes! I'm considering a career power-broking in the clergy!

I'm not sure where this Camelotty thing is coming from. It may be from the classic exchange from molesworth and his history master.

Sometimes you can get out of a hist. lesson by SEMING ILL. Pinch some flour from the kitchen if molesworth 2 hav not eaten it and rub well into face. After ten minits hold the brow and groan. The hist. master stops in the middle of agincourt:
'Thou semest pale, molesworth 1. Is ort the mater? Come, youth, impart what ails thee.'
(Note: Hist. masters always talk like ivanhoe, blak arow etc.)
'No really sir I am quite alright.'
'Zounds it semeth thou hast the plague, good skolar.'
'Nay, sirrah.'
(You talk like that too it is catching).
'But tis most remarkable i trow. Hi ye to matronnes room for a phial of phisick.'
'Nay nay sir no witches brew from yon crone shall ever pass my lips.'
'But thy eye is bright with fever thou shakest with palsy and would seem to have the ague. Tis surely the king's evil.'

In his great wisdom, molesworth notes that this strategy has the following drawback:

... if the hist. master go on long enuff you begin to believe that death is really upon you. You hav something wrong with your heart which hav stoped beating: your jaw is stuck open and you canot close it also you are going blind. On the whole it is beter to put up with the hist. lesson and draw beetles on the blotch quietly ...

Amen, my prep school hero. Pardon me while I procure a phial of phisick and find my beetle pen.