Women’s own: Bugs and colds

Mar 8 2008 by Lynne Barrett-Lee, Western Mail

I can’t not cough any more than I have been able to at any point in the whole of my sorry, cough infested, spittleflecked life

SHOULD have expected it, because it never fails to happen. Just as spring follows winter and night follows day, so it goes that should I succumb to a chest bug, I go on, without fail, to get a cough.

I didn’t want to bang on about it – nobody’s cough can ever be that interesting, after all – except that, you know what? I can’t help it. And get this, people. Get this loud and clear.

I cannot help coughing, OK?

It may seem as if I’m stating the obvious, but if there’s one thing that really gets my goat it’s that people who don’t get coughs never seem to understand that this – this inability not to cough – is true for pretty much every person who does cough.

Which, given the world can be divided into people who either fall into one camp or the other (it’s a genetic thing, clearly), means about half the population, whilst appearing outwardly sympathetic, are actually beaming irritable thoughts in my direction.

This means that privately, I’m getting on their nerves.

If you’re canny, you’ll have realised something else by this time. That this rant is mostly directed at my husband – himself a non-cougher of some 50 smug years.

Our bedroom. Early morning. Me ill still.

“You’d better,” he suggested, “get out of bed soon, or I might have no choice but to kill you.”

Don’t misunderstand me. It wasn’t the bon mot I minded.

Just the implication that the furious hacking that prompted it was anything I could control.

Yes, I’ll grant it must be challenging to spend yet another long night beside a spluttering, camphorated, high-decibel wreck.

But you know what? I did not see the funny side.

“Ha ha,” I said, once I’d corralled enough breath. “You might have to listen, but I have to LIVE this wretched cough. And, for your information, you snore.”

“That’s not fair,” he said. “I can’t help snoring. I’m asleep.”

“And I,” I snarled back, “can’t help coughing.”

“Yes, you can,” he persisted. “You just have to try harder.”

We’ve been doing this best part of 30 long years.

“To do what?” I asked anyway. “To not cough in the first place. You can if you try.”

No, I can’t! I can’t not cough any more than I have been able to at any point in the whole of my sorry, cough-infested, spittle-flecked life.

When is he ever going to see that?

“Harumph,” I thought. I am a martyr to my coughing.

So the next night I huffed off to lie awake in the teeny, boingy bed in the spare room amid the cases, piles of salopettes and 60 pairs of ski-socks which my illness means I’ve yet to put away.

But at least – a lone positive – I had a topic for my column; I could expose Pete’s lack of sympathy towards my cough to the world.

But guess what’s happened?

He’s rung me. Been on a mission.

He’s taken pity on my plight and the advice of the WRVS ladies, and fetched up home with a packet of cough sweets. Name of Jakeman’s, apparently. Supposed to be the best. Might, at the very least, make me feel a little brighter.

Bless, he said. Must be pretty tough. Poor old you.

Yes, I know.

Sweet, but also devilishly clever. What am I going to write about now?

www.lynnebarrett-lee.com