Ruby Grimshaw feels a cold coming on

Younger daughter S rang up last Sunday, said she was coming to see me and that she was starting a cold. I immediately recalled a lovely but slightly glum Irish Aunt, now dead, who always gave me the third degree on my health before allowing me through her door. The mention of a cold would send her into paroxysms of fear. “Sure and what are you thinking of?” she would wail. “At my age a bad cold could be after killing me!” (She would have not been older than early sixties then.)

So, although I was tempted to put S off from visiting me, some sense of not wanting to become an eccentric old biddy (Why worry now? daughter C would say) stopped me. How wrong I was.

“She would push any shopping I needed through the letterbox”

By Tuesday evening, my eyes were running, swallowing caused me great pain and my head felt about to fall off if I bent down. Every part of me from my feet to my teeth – even those that weren’t there any longer – ached. The question of whether to take anti-cold medications was settled when I threw up after the first one.

“Just let it take its course,” said a friend soothingly on the phone. She did add, interestingly enough, that she would push any shopping I needed through the letterbox or leave it outside, but that she would avoid meeting me.

Do they still run research centres where volunteers are tested with treatments to find a cure for the common cold? They would have to pay me millions to go. I spent three days and nights thrashing about in bed, alternately too hot or too cold, and having horrid dreams when I finally got to sleep. One night, during one of my forays to the bathroom to get yet another glass of water, I found some sleeping tablets in the bathroom cabinet.

I couldn’t read the date on the box (some readers will remember my cavalier attitude to sell-by-dates) and since I couldn’t remember what personal disaster it was that had caused them to be prescribed originally, I guess it’s no surprise that they didn’t work. (If my GP reads this I promise I’ve thrown them away.)

So I’ve learned my lesson. Even if Prince Charles himself rings up and says he’s coming for tea but that he’s got a little cold coming, I shall ask very politely if he could he make it next week. “What about Dominic West?” asks daughter C.

I’ll have to think about that one.