Bit of a Cold

My grandmother on my mother's side, who lived with us here for over thirty years, never got colds. No matter how many cold germs were whizzing round in the atmosphere, no matter how ill everyone else was, no matter how ferocious their coughing and sneezing, she just never succumbed.

"I don't get colds," she would announce cheerily, and with a slight air of superiority, as if it was just a question of being British and stoical and the germs would drop dead before they got you. The germs, indeed, never got her: she just quietly faded out at the age of ninety-three, without ever demonstrating her coughs or sneezes to the world.

I had what seemed like hundreds of colds when I was a child: I remember standing in the freezing cold playground, knee-deep in snow, penguins pecking at my ankles, polar bears lurking behind the trees, unable to breathe through my nose and feeling dreadfully ill.

For my mother believed in sending me to school no matter what. Though perhaps it was because I was very much the Girl who Cried Wolf - - I would fake anything from a broken leg to double pneumonia most mornings in the hope of getting out of going. Nobody could understand why: I was good at the subjects and had lots of friends - - Yes, maybe. But I had more interesting things to do at home, building dens and such. School was dull.

Back to the colds. Everyone I know seems to have had a cold recently, including everyone else in this house. Even the snake's been sneezing a bit (oh, all right then, he hasn't).

I've been fending them all off. Now I'm a grown-up (sort of) I am bringing my grandmother's genes into play and refusing all these colds.

But at last, I think one of them has got me. Woke this morning with a very sore throat. Just had a rather scary paroxysm of coughing, when for about a minute I felt I really couldn't breathe. Finding it hard to speak - - - oh, yes, yes, okay, you can stop laughing right now. This was my big bid for sympathy and you've just ruined it.