In a (Literal) Funk

Oh, not me, sweeties - don't worry on that front. The last vestiges of my annoying cold aside, I'm in the pink.

No, it's the entire city that is, for reasons unknown, laboring under a kind of miasma. It's a smell, actually, one that ranges in strength from faint to pungent, and in tang from something vaguely recalling slightly off creamed corn to a stench very like very off crab salad.

Opinions as to the origin of this Mystery Odor are many and diverse. Some, mostly those who maintain it is usually strongest near the sea, believe it is some kind of tidal affliction, the result - hopefully temporary - of some deep-sea die-off or seasonal bloom.

Others - and this seems persuasive to me - point to the extensive preparations now under way for His Majesty's birthday - a Major Local Deal - which involves, among many other things, a huge amount of replanting of all the capital's green areas, including traffic circles, parks, and the swaths of grass and flowers that line the principal thoroughfares. In doing so, the gardeners use, so these believers posit, various kinds of fertilizer and growth-enhancers, at least one of which appears to be derived from some kind of pungent fish meal. They point out that most of the city is near the sea, and that you can still smell something in areas very far from it.

Whatever it is, it's really rather nasty, leading to the feeling that one might at any moment, in the words of Miss Clare Boothe Luce, go unswallow, and needs to be fixed, pronto.