Around this period a year ago, I found myself participating in a broadcast with three singers. Present were a rapper of Ghanaian heritage, a major pop celebrity, and a famous mezzo-soprano. We were in the heart of winter. Just the night prior, I’d been at an old friend’s 60th birthday, squeezed into a pub's event space in a Surrey location. It had been a good night, but now, simply to make conversation, I wondered ways to dodge the common cold with many partygoers were players in a symphony of coughs, sneezes, snuffles and nose-blows. Incidentally, what explains the trumpet-like nose blows, and others don’t? A topic for future discussion.
Their Take by the Trio
When I brought up my evening, these three musicians in the TV green room did two things. First, they edged away from me. Second, they launched into an animated conversation about preventing colds which understandable due to their profession was something of an obsession for them. I get that, yet I'm personally involved – preventing colds is crucial for me since my colds are more severe than others'. I lack official documentation, but I know it to be true. My illnesses drag on. My nasal passages are more congested, I have a more irritated throat, my coughing fits are louder, barkier and apparently endless. My family, familiar with the early throat signs indicating trouble ahead, either kick me out of the room or leave themselves. Back when I presented football on ITV, my poor colleagues in the studio gallery learned to recognize the signals. “Headphones off!” the studio director would holler to the staff before I deafened them all, blowing the wiring in their headphones.
Dealing With Nasal Congestion
As for my blocked noses, don’t start me. Sprays, drops, even the sharp aroma of warm spirits my mum prescribes … they help briefly until they fail. Nothing is quite as sad than a Brummie tone delivered with no nasal airflow. I mean, it's somewhat nasal on a good day. Fortunately, this often brings compassion, which isn’t always a good thing. In my first year away at university, without my mother's home remedies, the cleaner in our halls of residence felt sorry for me. “I’ve got just the thing for that, you dear. I’ll be back in a minute.” She was wonderfully sweet, very Irish, and demanded I eat the fresh, skinless onion she presented to me. She observed me eating it. Bless her. No improvement resulted, sadly, apart from sending my guts into raptures and creating bad breath.
The Mezzo-Soprano’s Cold Avoidance Regime
Thus, I despise catching colds and am convinced prevention beats cure that onion-based or otherwise, don’t work. I focused carefully alongside my colleagues while she explained her health practices. With seasonal gigs on the schedule, she clearly took it all very seriously. She instructed us to use hand gel hourly throughout the winter as far as I could deduce and, specific measures were necessary when it came to parties and what not. Ahead of any such engagement, she recommended a couple of blasts of Vicks First Defence through the nasal passages – regardless of symptoms. Drastic. It appealed to me. And, listen to this, she insisted on following it up post-event with more spray of the same stuff.
The Results
I was in. And I can report I remained cold-free. It wasn't perfect: the numerous products I purchased, mislaid, bought again, rediscovered, and so on. And that dispiriting moment you realise you’ve sat on the little vessel of hand gel kept in your jeans and it’s now splurging everywhere. Nevertheless, a small cost for the benefit. With winter returning, I'm stocked up with the singer's suggested supplies. I’m ready for battle.
