En Passant: Aaaa…. attishoo! It’s winter

SUMMER seemed to linger this year I thought, but undoubtedly autumn is here now, and on Saturday I woke up feeling like I’d been run over by one of those old blue Hi-Ace taxis, the one with the buckled back door held closed with a strand of plastic-covered wire salvaged from one of those cheap wire coat hangers that you get with your drycleaning. The sort of smooth-tyred taxi whose road safety is reliant upon a length of orange twine, roughly spun from an old string onion pocket, holding something vital together. Yeah, one of those, with a Nquthu number plate, ran me over.

So, when I woke up on Saturday I felt quite grotty. Doris said, “You know when people sometimes say, ‘You look like a million dollars?’ Well, you don’t. You look like about one rand thirty five. And last night you were barking like a performing seal, and sneezing like you’d sniffed pepper through a rolled up fifty buck note. Like a spice junkie. Are you sick?”

I nodded. “I’ve got a gold,” I said.

“A what?”

“A gold! A snot neus. My doze is gunning so fast it bakes Zoda Butt…”

“Pardon?”

“Ag, man, Zoda Budd. By doze bakes Zoda Butt dook like a flippen doordoise.”

” You’ve got a cold and your nose makes Zola Budd look like a tortoise?” I nodded.

“OK,” said Doris, in the manner of all women when faced with the evident and impending “death” of their sick partners (the sort of look that says, “Ja, you should try childbirth, pal”), “what can I get you?”

I said that breakfast in bed would be nice – some sloppy scrambled egg on toast, maybe with a couple of rashers of bacon and a slice of fried tomato – yeah, that would be nice, and would she first get me a dead leopard.

“A what? A dead leopard?”

“Ja, just one, please my petal, one dead leopard in a small mug.”

“I don’t understand you…”

“A dead leopard, you know, a bed debit. For golds and flu.”

“Do you mean,” she asked, “a Med Lemon?” I nodded, she sighed and off she went. She’s very good to me is Doris.

So, anyway, to the smell of frying bacon and grilling bread, I got to ponder my affliction, the common cold, it being my second in a matter of weeks, and winter hasn’t even started yet.

I have always believed that nasty draughts (why did the drunk king get a cold? He had Castle draughts, ha, ha) and cold weather encourage catching colds, but apparently there is no real evidence of that being true.

A cold is a viral infection which your doctor will call nasopharyngitis or rhinopharyngitis, to justify the fee he charges you to set foot in his office. Call it what you will, it’s still a cold, the common cold, and you’ll cough, sneeze, have snot running forwards out your nose and on to your shoes, or backwards in a rather slimy post-nasal drip, and you might have a sore throat and possibly a fever. My eyes get itchy sometimes. You feel grotty. You feel like you’ve been run over by a taxi.

But the thing is, see, it will be all over in a matter of days, with me about seven days usually.

And you cannot prevent getting a cold, there’s no 100% guaranteed prevention method. The best you can do is wash your hands, and I suppose you could wear a face mask for whenever you are going to be within spitting (and sneezing) distance of anyone else.

If you are completely paranoid you could wear a gown and disposable gloves to go with your mask, but I imagine your partner might have something to say about that, especially at bedtime, and it won’t be, “Let’s play doctor doctor!”

Apparently, and don’t quote me here, zinc supplements “may help to reduce the prevalence of colds”. I mentioned this to Doris and she said, “Bloody hell, I spend enough time with my hands in the sink washing dishes, without needing a supplement. Are you crazy?”

There ain’t no cure for a cold. Nope, not Old Brown Sherry, not dead leopards, not vitamin C, not chicken soup, not a concoction of honey, lemon, buchu brandy and ginger liqueur. Not even your Oma’s secret and disgusting recipe made out of fish heads and Sunlight soap. All you can do, all your doctor can do, is to treat the symptoms, simply make you feel better as the cold virus runs its course.

And here’s the thing. I’ve read that “Much of the benefit from treatment is however attributed to the placebo effect”. That’s what they say. In other words, what we THINK will make us feel better, will more than likely MAKE us feel better.

So, why shouldn’t that be some sloppy scrambled egg on a slice of toast, a couple of rashers and a slice of fried tomato.

Oh, and a dead leopard.