Sleep was between the coughs and only until the head cavities filled to overflowing and stopped the ability to breathe.
Fair go, I was sicker than a zombie and made about as much sense.
"Urrgh" meant something akin to "yes" and "urgggggghha" was "for your safety do not approach the bear".
Anyway, by Sunday the fluidal tide had finally receded and a pick-me-up was needed.
It was a glorious day in the Bay of Plenty and I was determined to take advantage of perfect driving and photo-taking weather.
Whakatane, the chosen destination, is an easy hour's drive from Papamoa and gave us plenty of time to get there, chill, recover and relax.
It also gave me some really lovely Bay locations to shoot.
And it is on a warm, blue-sky day that the coastal Bay of Plenty is hard to surpass. The green of our farmland, the fabulous blue of our ocean and the bucolic, relaxed way of life we so enjoy.
The most active thing was watching a youth soccer match and wandering around a low-key town market.
Lunch was fish and chips straight out of the paper while sitting on the Whakatane wharf. The harbour was picture perfect with Whale Island looming in the distance.
The waters of the Bay along the Matata Straight were sparklingly enticing and again showed off one of the region's secret gems.
Taking a quick detour off the highway on the way home you could sit on the beautiful sands and watch people trying their luck at white baiting by a fast-flowing stream mouth.
It was too early in the year to drop into the fresh-berry farms in the area, although the craving was sated with a stop-off at the fresh-fruit icecream purveyor near Kiwi 360 and adding to the haul with some packs of biltong. Oh yeah.
Mind you, we also saw a road accident in which, fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.
It was a head-on crash at the new Whakatane turnoff roundabout and, according to police, was the fourth one there in the past two weeks. The new layout is clearly causing a bit of confusion, so be careful folks.
I got home with a renewed appreciation of just how good life can be in our neck of the woods, it's no wonder that so many people want to come and live here.
And, amazingly, winter has yet to end.
I reckon there are few things better to use when cooking than mushrooms.
They are not only flavoursome, but also versatile - being good with wine or cream in an accompaniment to steak, or cream to go with lamb's fry. Yum, I'm getting hungry just writing about them.
My girl likes mushrooms, but my younger lad is not a fan - when he knows about them.
A few months back I made a sensational (if I say so myself) steak and vegetable pie.
It was platter sized and enough for a few meals.
One of the ingredients I put in was a huge amount of mushrooms and the pie was fantastic.
Even my boy loved it, although he did find about five small pieces of mushroom in it, scraped them out saying "ewwwww".
"How many of those did you put in there?" he asked, horrified.
"About a kilo," came the smiling response. He looked as if I had poisoned him.
"Did you like the pie?" I asked.
"You put mushrooms in it ...
"But did you like the pie?"
"You put mushrooms in it ..."
"But did you like it?"
"You put mushrooms in it ..."
It went on for hours like that until he finally fessed up that the pie was very tasty.
Mind you, he still won't eat blessed mushrooms.
Which brings me on to the slightly whacked out tale of three guys in Katikati who decided to have a magical cuppa of mushrooms ... or was that a cuppa magical mushrooms?
Anyway, the guys brewed up and chugged down and then all sorts of unmagical things started happening to them.
It basically ended with flashing lights and major headaches for the trio.
Me, I think I'll stick to cooking with normal mushrooms and spend the rest of my life trying to get my boy to like them.
• Richard Moore is an award-winning Western Bay journalist and photographer. richard@richardmoore.com
