Thoughts on other people’s cold remedies. Also it has been raining

Good morning, if it is still the morning when I post this. The odds of it being this morning when you read it are slim, but maybe you are catching up on your internet based light entertainment on your Monday commute.

If you drive to work, please stop reading.

How are we? Autumn in Uni City has once again proven itself to be, in equal parts: colourful, misty and extremely, noisily, rainy. The sort where your bag won’t dry and then you realise that it was never truly up to the job of keeping your stuff dry in anything one could call weather and now you have to search for another. I usually try to get my clothes and accessories second hand or in a swap these days, but I think I’m going to have to buy a new-new backpack. It’s got to last two more years of my degree at the very least, and it’ll leave the house with me six days a week minimum for, what, forty weeks of the year? And most of those weeks it will be raining.

I kind of feel bad for typing that because this morning’s rain has given way to clear-ish skies and I can hear birds singing, which is almost too bucolic to feel real. I can also hear sirens, though. Cheers England.

Other than getting drenched on my way to work and/or classes, I have been busy trying and failing to shake fresher’s flu. I think I’m on my second or third bout now, unless it’s just one long virus-driven party in my nose. My house is coughing like we’re Marge’s sisters in The Simpsons. It’s not Covid, we’ve checked. Other viruses are available. The one upside is that I can’t rush about too much, so I’m taking things slowly and trying to enjoy the little things in life, like going more than half an hour without sneezing. My favourite cold remedy, sticking your head over a bowl of hot water, is a lot less practical when the only big bowl you own is your crockpot, so I’m mostly taking a lot of too-hot showers and hoping it has the same impact. It does not. I’ve just remembered my nan telling me a story about someone she used to know who had a Lemsip every evening. This wasn’t if they were ill, it was every evening like you might have a herbal tea or a cocoa.

I have so many questions.

Are you permanently buzzed on paracetamol and whatever they put in Lemsip, or does it wear off really quickly and just mean that if you were really ill you’d have to go straight to morphine? Does it have any impact on the health of your gut? I’m remembering that some of you are not from the UK. This is what I am talking about:

Why does the logo include a sword? Is it a metaphor for destroying your cold? The questions pile on…

I ought to go and get my day properly started – I need to go bag shopping! And the rain might hold off for a bit, so I should probably go and enjoy that blue sky while I can see it. Also, I got an email notification that a survey I put online for my stationery business in 2018 has had a new response. I mean, sure, I’ll take a look…

Let me know your cold remedies. I am curious as to whether any of them include knocking back mild painkillers every day whether you need them or not.

Look after yourselves,
Francesca

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