Andrew Kay is having a taste of his own medicine

The other day I got home exhausted and sat on a biscuit tin. Needless to say it buckled under my weight and is now of no use whatsoever. Sadly it was not our biscuit tin; our biscuits seldom last long enough to require being kept in an airtight container. We do have a biscuit tin but we use it to keep patent medicines in. Within its depths there are ointments, unguents and unctions, lozenges, pastilles, pills, potions and powders.

“I’m not dead yet though, not quite”

Having grown up in St Helens, Lancashire (I still refuse to think of it as Merseyside) all ailments were dealt with by the administering of Beecham’s Powders. The local company had a massive red brick building right in the centre of town and for many locals it was the alternative to working for Pilkington Glass.
Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor and author of one of the finest and sauciest quotes relating to the cello, was the family’s most famous son, and perhaps the town’s too. I can’t think of many famous names that hail from the place that was once my home. Oh of course, Johnny Vegas, that makes me feel slightly better and of course the much missed Pete McCarthy who might have claimed Warrington as home but went to school in St Helens.

I digress – as always. The pill tin has been much in demand this week as both of us seem to be harbouring the Sussex collection of viral cold bugs, hacking coughs, runny noses… the works.

I know that there is little point going to see the doctor, after all a cold is a cold and not much can be done, although I do feel that sometimes they like telling you off for wasting their time. Maybe that’s how they get their kicks, berating us for worrying about our health. I seem to remember an equal number of occasions when I have been told off for not coming to the doctor sooner. You can’t win, can you?

So a tin full of patent remedies has to be the answer, surely? Even if I do mix and match them with an alarmingly liberal approach. After all, what harm can it do? Probably more than I think, especially as I never ever check the best before dates. I’m not dead yet though, not quite.