Almost gone!

The tail end of a cough and cold is, in a way, worse than the actual full blown affliction.

You have spent your time sniffling and hacking; drinking strange draughts and sucking suspicious pastilles and leaving a disgusting trail of paper handkerchiefs behind you (though thinking about it, that is probably me, sorry) and generally feeling sorry for yourself.

Then the bright day dawns when you can breath through your nose again, you sound less and less like Elieen Stritch when she burst an office where I was ‘helping’ out in a charity gala and announced to no one in particular in a voice which sounded as though ossified by rust and packed in gravel that there was ‘something wrong with my fucking voice!” When she sang that evening, I did not noticeably register a difference from the voice of the outburst.

Anyway, you regain your voice and sound less like some articulate bear. Life, it would seem, is getting better.

But the malady doesn’t go away completely: mucus still succumbs to gravity; the tonsil fairies continue to wave their feathered wands absentmindedly at sensitive parts of the throat and subterranean lung gremlins occasionally rumble their way along the tubes. You think for a few glorious moments that all these ill omened creatures have been banished only to reappear (usually at the most inopportune moments) with feverish force. But you are conscious that this animosity is of a rear guard nature and not the out and out attack that you are conscious you have survived.

My voice lacks its usual smooth gravitas while certain rough strands of barbed wire have insinuated their way around my vocal chords making my voice sound different (startlingly different on the phone) and, as I stubbornly maintain, sexy.

I shall work steadily to re-enter the human race when friends and family will be able to kiss me rather than treat me like an ambient leper!



The cheaper alternative to the stratospherically priced Brompton Folding Bike is found in Carrefour for about 15% of the price. This is an altogether more basic bike and it doesn’t fold into such a small space but, 15% for goodness sake! To my infinite shame I attempted to wobble a few yards in the supermarket and felt, well, uncomfortable.


Not only uncomfortable but decidedly unsafe. I am now rethinking my idea of placidly cycling down the newly constructed walkway on the beach and returning to walking sedately. I might try and borrow a bike to find out if one of the fundamental credos of the human species that ‘once you can ride a bike you never forget how to’ is true in my case. Perhaps the architecture of my inner ear has changed over the years and my sense of equilibrium is differently balanced.

Or it might be the Rioja.