Around this period last year, I found myself participating in a broadcast with three singers. Present were a hip-hop artist with Ghanaian roots, a major pop celebrity, and a famous mezzo-soprano. It was deep midwinter. The night before, I attended a longtime friend's 60th birthday, squeezed into a pub's event space in a Surrey location. The festivities were fun, but now, just for something to say, I pondered ways to dodge the common cold when half the people at the party were part of an orchestra of winter ailments. On a side note, what explains the trumpet-like nose blows, and others don’t? Something to explore later.
The Reaction from the Trio
Upon referencing the party, this trio of troubadours in the waiting area did two things. To begin with, they edged away from me. Second, they engaged in a feverishly enthusiastic discussion on how to avoid catching colds and this understandable due to their profession was something of an obsession for them. I understand that, yet I'm personally involved – preventing colds is crucial for me as my symptoms are harsher than most. There's no doctor's note to prove it, but I know it to be true. My symptoms persist. My nasal passages are more congested, I have a more irritated throat, my coughing fits are louder, barkier and apparently endless. My relatives, alert to the initial throat noises which herald the coming storm, sometimes banish me or leave themselves. When I worked as a sports broadcaster, my poor colleagues in the studio gallery grew attuned to the warning signs. “Headphones off!” the studio director would holler to everyone before I deafened them all, blowing the wiring in their headphones.
Handling Nasal Congestion
As for my blocked noses, don’t start me. Sprays, drops, including the intense vapor from heated brandy my mother recommends … they help briefly until they fail. And there’s nothing as pitiable as the sound of a Birmingham accent spoken without the benefit of air passing through the nostrils. In other words, it sounds a bit nasally restricted at the best of times. Fortunately, this often brings compassion, which isn't ideal. When I started college, without my mother's home remedies, the cleaning staff at our accommodation felt sorry for me. “I’ve got just the thing for that, you unfortunate soul. I’ll be back in a minute.” She was very lovely, distinctly Irish, and very insistent that I ate the fresh, skinless onion she presented to me. She observed me eating it. Goodness gracious. Didn’t achieve anything, unfortunately, apart from sending my guts into raptures and making my breath smell terrible.
The Vocalist’s Prevention Strategy
So no, I loathe winter illnesses and am quite sure that prevention is better than the cures that traditional or modern, don’t work. I focused carefully alongside my colleagues as the singer detailed her prevention methods. Due to upcoming holiday performances, she clearly took it all very seriously. She instructed us to apply hand sanitiser on the hour, every hour all winter long as far as I could deduce and, extra steps were needed during festivities. Before any event, she suggested a few applications of Vicks First Defence into both nostrils – whether you felt a cold coming or not. Extreme. It appealed to me. And, listen to this, she mandated a second dose later with additional bursts of the solution.
The Results
I was in. And I have to say I didn't sniffle all winter. There were drawbacks: the countless bottles of First Defence I bought, misplaced, bought again, rediscovered, and so on. And that dispiriting moment when you discover you've crushed the hand sanitizer you left in your back pocket and it's leaking all over. Still, all a price worth paying. As the cold season approaches once more, I’m re-armed to the teeth with her prevention arsenal. I'm set for the fight.
