No one person is credited with having invented Kleenex. It developed during World War Two out of a shortage of cotton for dressings and bandages. A kind of cellulose cotton seems to have caught the name Kleenex — no attribution but lots of application. After the war the surplus was sold as a wipe for cold cream but women complained that their men were using it for nose-blowing. Then someone devised a pop-up box and Kleenex became ubiquitous, if not generic. I can’t remember when it became a household necessity to me, a little too late for my crusty young nose.

Other products have become generic. Thermos comes to mind, also known as a vacuum bottle (I think there’s a TM attached). I can think of a few used by the Brits: Hoover as a verb for vacuum clean but used slangily for devouring food; corn flakes (lower case) for any cereal. But people have become generic, too, like quisling.

quisling, noun, a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country. [ as modifier ] : he had the Quisling owner of the factory arrested. ORIGIN Second World War: from the name of Major Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945), the Norwegian army officer and diplomat who ruled Norway on behalf of the German occupying forces (1940–45).

Perhaps a new one is in the making now, to supersede the old meaning.

trump verb, by wearing the simplest of dresses and no jewellery, she had trumped them all: outshine, outclass, upstage, put in the shade, eclipse, surpass, outdo, outperform; beat, do/be better than, better, top, cap; informal be a cut above, be head and shoulders above, leave standing, walk away from; Brit. informal knock spots off; archaic outrival, outvie. PHRASES trump something up since her arrest, they've trumped up charges. (Thesaurus, online)

Now I need recharging. I't’s three o’clock in the morning….

I have a cold and I’ve lost my voice. I have a runny nose, sneezing quite lot, but my throat isn’t sore. I don’t like to take pills/medicine, but I do indulge in Neo-Citran or what my husband used to call an Uncle Tom’s Left Tiddly: rye whisky, lemon juice and honey muddled together with boiling water poured over it. I don’t make it now because I never have rye in the house—oh. but try Sortilège—rye liqueur, sweetened with maple syrup—on the rocks. I digress. I was talking about colds.

I remember my nose, always stuffed, never clear for breathing. I tried to sleep but it was a time-limited sleep: first on one side until that nostril clogs up, roll over until the other nostril clogs, repeat. And the edges round the nostril were crusted and green You don’t see that sort of thing nowadays. We didn’t even have Kleenex in those days.

I looked it up and reported but I lost my copy and Low Battery is calling time-out..

À bientôt.