When you have an ordinary cold now, nobody cares.
Even if it is a heavy cold, with your eyes streaming, and you have a painful headache and thunderous sneezing that threatens to crack your already painful ribs, there is only one question. Have you got Covid?
Unless you confirm that you do, no one is bothered. Ach, you’ll be fine tomorrow. It’s just man-flu.
Grow a pair, they say. That’s just silly. I have already grown a pair of red, sore, watery eyes.
I’ve done my home test, left over from when I succumbed in 2021. I don’t have Covid, just an ordinary stinker of a common cold. I do get head colds badly, but I’ve not suffered like this for years.
Every four hours, I am still on the cold cure powders – “now with extra paracetamol”. With no expense spared, the heater is on all the time to ward off this chilly snap we are having just now.
A long time ago, I was volunteered to undergo tests to determine how we cope with a bout of sniffles, in a bid to help the nation defeat the common cold. That was a great 10 days in the top-secret testing facilities at Porton Down in Wiltshire. All the indignities us 20 airmen were put through – swabs in the nose and mouth, needles down south, and weird, smelly fruit for breakfast. This was the Chemical Defence Establishment run by the Ministry of Defence and its army of softly-spoken boffins.
The only drink allowed was orange squash and alcohol-free lager. That stuff tasted like something that had been passed by cats. Not that I know what that tastes like, but that was its well-deserved reputation. In our last week there, a professor with a memorable handlebar moustache told me the tests showed I had high immunity to the common cold and not to worry.
I caught a bad dose of the sniffles two days after I left there. It shows how much Prof Tache knew.
A familiar face at SNP conference
It showed how much the doubters knew when Nicola Sturgeon returned to the political stage at the SNP conference on Monday. They said she would not be welcomed back by the party. Warm words for her, and from her, for the current beleaguered leadership that made everything in Aberdeen seem hunky-dory. Ah, but is it? It is a tad early, with the recent history of turmoil and challenges ahead, to say that they are all lovey-dovey again.
The SNP were trounced in Rutherglen, an SNP MP has defected, and the polls are, well, horrible.
The sight of a beaming ex-first minister eager for a smile back was always going to delight Humza Yousaf after a really rubbish time, with in-laws caught up in the Palestinian conflict. Well done for half-smiling before Nicola glided in to rekindle fondly-remembered cheers.
Their latest version of an independence strategy is not for everyone. Former SNP member Angus MacNeil MP is among those who have dissed it already. The coalition cannot please everyone, but does it please enough? There’s probably another SNP storm coming before long, but at least they will all have wandered off before the north-east says hello to the real storm, Babet, on Thursday.
Bayble’s first Rodeo
I must say hello to Rodeo, an adorable donkey who recently arrived on the island with his owner, archaeologist Carol Knott from Bayble. Determined to get a good, hard-working donkey with the right temperament to become an adopted Rudhach, she went to the south of France to find four-legged help for the croft in Point. She found a strong, quiet and determined Rodeo. They walked up through France, crossed the Channel and, in Kent, got a lift northward.
Trying to interview Carol on the pier a while later, I saw out of the corner of my eye that Rodeo was nibbling on my furry microphone
Despite the long journey, Rodeo was feeling spritely, if a little hungry, when I met them off the ferry. Trying to interview Carol on the pier a while later, I saw out of the corner of my eye that Rodeo was nibbling on my furry microphone. Carol smiled and asked if it was made of vegetables. No. Simply the finest simulated cat fur. That is why these microphones are often cruelly known as deadcats. Thankfully, Rodeo decided he would wait until he reached Bayble to get a snack.
Meanwhile, I am still off snacks, but I am feeling better. It was touch and go on Monday. It was only when I was presented with a steaming bowl of Mrs X’s lentil and carrot soup that the symptoms finally began to subside.
Iain Maciver is a former broadcaster and news reporter from the Outer Hebrides
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